


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2008 with funding from 
Microsoft Corporation 





http://www. archive.org/details/belgiumsagony0Overh 





any iN 
ee 4 as ite 


| 











BELGIUM'S 
AGONY 
¥ 


Translation and Introduétion by 
M. T. H. SADLER. The three 
poems in the book, which are 
given untranslated, have not be- 
fore been published in book form. 


EMILE VERHAEREN 


BELGIUM’S 
AGONY 





BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
1915 


PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN 
CHISWICK PRESS: CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO, 
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION . . ° . 
LA BELGIQUE SANGLANTE 3 3 
DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI . 

THE MARK OF THE TEUTON . ° 
CEUX DE LIEGE . ° . . 
BELGIAN PRIDE . ° . 
ALBERT THE WELL=BELOVED . . 
THE LITTLE VILLAGES OF FLANDERS 
PERVYSE . . . . . 
DIXMUDE, NIEUPORT, YPRES 
GUILLAUME II . ° . . 
GERMANY UNCIVILIZABLE 
GERMANY AND ART . . . 
GERMANY THE INQUISITOR . . 
GERMANY THE ASIATIC . : 
CONCLUSION . : . 


S| 

- * 

* 
ot» ” 
a 

re 
? 

é 

a 


= 


4 4 
* + 
ata 
Mb 4, 
sl 
ss * é 


a toh 8 Pre 
a ~ ie Seal 


am iis a at 
* ~ 
ae? 
. 
oTey 
a | 
7 
i nn ne 
a a 
é 
* 
| 
& 1 
i" 
ms, 
: 
° 





INTRODUCTION * 


I 

FEW weeks after the outbreak of war 

the newspapers, in an obscure para- 
graph, stated that German artillery had bom- 
barded the Flemish village of Saint-Amand, 
near Antwerp. Nearly simultaneously, but in 
numerous and prominent columns, they de- 
scribed the wanton and ruthless destruction 
of the ancient university city of Louvain. 
Thirdly, on August 24, began the great 
British retreat from the line Mons-Conde, the 
retreat to south-westward that experts hold 
to rank among the finest military achieve- 
ments of history. 

And between these three happenings there 
is a connecting link other than the tremend- 
ous struggle of which they form a part, a 
link to which subsequent events and, most 
of all, this little book have given a melancholy 
and tragic interest. 

‘ For permission to use again such portions of this 


introduction as appeared originally in Poetry and Drama, 
I am indebted to the kindness of the editor.—M.T.H.S. 


Vil 


INTRODUCTION 


At Saint-Amand Emile Verhaeren was 
born. At Louvain he was educated. And 
not more than fifteen miles south-west of 
Mons, in the full path of the retreating British 
army and the pursuing German hordes, lay 
(who can say what is now its fate?) the little 
country farm in which he used, every year, 
to spend the spring and autumn. 

There are few men living who have loved 
and served their country so nobly as Verhaeren 
has loved and honoured Belgium. His be- 
loved Flanders, whose every feature he has 
made famous wherever the French language 
is read or spoken, lies now bleeding and 
stricken. Shall the man who has sung his 
country’s beauty in time of prosperity, and 
who now shares her misery, fail to sing her 
glory in her hour of triumphant agony? This 
passionate and moving book is the answer to 
that question. May it, as a comment on the 
greatest war of history by the greatest poet 
of the time, be treasured and applauded alike 
by this generation and posterity. The few 
pages that follow are the tribute of one who, 
from admiring Verhaeren as a poet, has had 
the privilege to come to love him as a man. 

Vill 


INTRODUCTION 
II 


Satnt-AMAND lies near the mouth of the 
Scheldt in the fertile plain of Flanders, and 
the poet has indeed assimilated to himself 
this land of wide horizons, of great gulfs of 
sky. Its breadth and distance have become 
part of him, and from a childhood full of 
wonder at the powers and moods of nature, 
he has grown to a manhood strengthened by 
that finest of all beliefs, the belief in the 
limitless possibilities of mankind. 

It is barely possible to overrate the influ- 
ence of the poet’s child-memories on_ his 
mature work and ultimate philosophy. He 
spent his youth in a country where, year 
in year out, is played in all its force the 
elemental drama of nature. The moods of 
every season became ingrained in him, and 
in his poems to-day the world may experience 
the same thrill, the same awe that the boy 
Verhaeren felt at the joy and sorrow of that 
Flemish plain. 

As a child he would lie in bed and listen 
while the great tempests from the North Sea 
came roaring over the fields and huddled 
villages, beating their music into his brain, 

ix 


INTRODUCTION 


filling his blood with their blind and splendid 
strength. As a man, forty years later, he 
writes of “Vents de Tempétes”’ : 
Un poing d’effroi tord les villages ; 
Les hauts clochers, dans les lointains, 
Envoient |’écho de leurs tocsins 
Bondir de plage en plage. 

As a child, the morning after one of these 
gales, he would run out into the sullen, un- 
easy daylight and watch the racing clouds, 
the sudden glint of sunshine, the weary trees 
still writhing after their buffeting of the night, 
and hear, far to the southward, the mutter of 
the distant storm vanished beyond the edge 
of that sad, tormented plain. As a man he 
writes of the far-flung clamour of the winds 
“qui se querellent, de loin en loin, a Pinfini”’ ; 
of the haunted menace of November: 


Voici les vents, les saints, les morts 

Et la procession profonde 

Des arbres fous et des branchages tords 

Qui voyagent de lun a l’autre bout du monde. 


Voici les grand’routes comme des croix 
A l’infini parmi les plaines, 
Les grand’routes et puis leurs croix lointaines, 
A Vinfini sur les vallons et dans les bois! 
(Les Vignes de ma Muraille.) 


x 


PVE RODUCTION 


As a child, again, he would walk the empty 
streets of some little gabled town, while the 
quiet rain filled the air with its whispers, 
dripping from eaves and ledges, making little 
pools among the cobble-stones. He would 
rove the plain in springtime feeling the burst- 
ing life in hedgerow and plough-land. He 
would lie among the sand-dunes in thesummer 
sun and bathe in the royal waters of the 
Scheldt. And all these moods of nature he 
has sung as no one else has sung them, with 
the fierce delight of intimate worship : 


Longue, comme les fils sans fin, la longue pluie 
Interminablement, a travers le jour gris, 
Ligne les carreaux verts avec ses long fils gris, 
Infiniment, la pluie 
La longue pluie, 
La pluie. 

(Les Villages Ilusoires.) 


Or again : 


Au long des cours, des impasses et des venelles 
Des vieux quartiers retraits, 
La pluie 
Semble a jamais 
Chez elle. 
(Les Villes a Pignons.) 


The majority of the poems dealing with 
XI 


NERO Da er rOon 


Verhaeren’s native land, and it is they, at such 
a time and in such a book as this, demand 
chief mention, are contained in the five books 
of the series Toute la Flandre. The first 
poem in the first book of the series (Les Ten- 
dresses Premieres) is almost an epitome of the 
whole. It is a rhythmic autobiography, be- 
ginning : 
. . . les souvenirs chauffent mon sang 
Et pénétrent mes moelles . . . 


Je me souviens du village prés de l’Escaut, 
D’ou l’on voyait les grands bateaux 

Passer, ainsi qu’un réve empanaché de vent 
Et merveilleux de voiles, 

Le soir en cortége sous les étoiles. 


The subsequent verses describe the garden, 
the neighbouring factory (belonging to his 
uncle), his parents and relations, his animals; 
and the poem culminates in a song of praise 
and love for Flanders. Fierce pride in his 
country permeates these five books; and 
every summer, before the war, he would visit 
this beloved land communing with the mighty 
ghosts of her past history, moving among the 
peasant men and women, or with the grim, 
silent fishermen watching the grey sea rolling 

xil 


INTRODUCTION 


tirelessly against the desolation of “ La Guir- 
lande des Dunes.” 

This series of books comprises those poems 
of Verhaeren which were formerly most be- 
loved by his countrymen and least admired 
by foreigners. That they glorify Flanders 
was reason enough for their fame among the 
Flemish, and also for their comparative neglect 
by the French. Whether Belgium’s heroism 
will cause them to be more widely read the 
future will show, but there are, between their 
author and the Frenchman at least, psycho- 
logical differences too deep ever to be entirely 
bridged. 

Verhaeren has never been one of the many 
gods of literary France, because only when he 
is entirely philosophic is he really in sympathy 
with French ideals. He is too tempestuous, 
too illogical—with the unheeding illogicality 
of nature—to appeal to the Gallic sense. The 
French, neither in literature nor painting, 
have yet grappled successfully with Nature. 
Corot could not refrain from obvious lyricism, 
from becoming a slave to twilight. Only 
Cézanne, and perhaps Courbet, seem to have 
felt the stark basis of landscape, and the former 

Xill 


INTRODUCEION 


was thwarted by lack of skill in externalising 
his impressions, while the latter never threw 
off entirely the fetters of conventional com- 
position. In poetry the names of Hugo 
and Francis Jammes suggest themselves. Of 
Hugo I shall speak ina minute, while Jammes, 
for all his charm, can never seriously be pitted 
against Verhaeren as a poet of nature. The 
Fleming is nearer the English, and one can- 
not help feeling the similarity between Ver- 
haeren’s love of wind and sunshine and the 
pantheism of Wordsworth or the painting of 
Constable. Indeed, Constable seems to sug- 
gest an apt example. Consider one of those 
wonderful cloud-studies of his—a windy sky 
piled high with great white clouds, and at the 
bottom of the picture a mere strip of sun- 
flecked field. Then read Verhaeren’s poem 
“Les Beaux Nuages”: 


Avec ton ciel de nacre et d’ambre 
Tu rehausses les champs, les prés et les villages, 

O mois des beaux nuages 

Septembre! 
* * * # * 

L’air vibre; et l’on entend la cadence des ailes 

Passer, en vols nombreux, sur les blanches maisons ; 
XIV 


INTRODUCTION 


Et prés du bois, la-bas, les cueilleuses d’airelles 


Vers leur rouge récolte inclinent leur chanson. 
* * * * * 


Et Septembre, 1a-haut, 
Avec son ciel de nacre et d’or voyage, 
Et suspend sur les prés, les champs et les hameaux, 
Les blocs étincelants de ses plus beaux nuages. 
(Les Plaines.) 


A further comparison between this and, say, 
Baudelaire’s prose poem “‘ Les Nuages”’ will 
reveal an essential difference of attitude. Simi- 
larly Verhaeren sees in autumn either the 
fragrant memories of a glowing summer or 
the menace of wind and frost; that is to say 
the idea of continuity, of a future pregnant 
with possibility, never leaves him. Verlaine, 
Merrill, Moréas, or any other paysagiste of 
French symbolist generation, will sing of the 
plaintive beauty of decay, rejoicing in the 
quiet music of the dying year, taking an 
isolated, sensuous delight in nature’s melan- 
choly, but giving no thought to the place of 
autumn in the endless cycle of seasons, feeling 
no sorrow that another summer has faded into 
mist.’ And so it seems that those people who 


* This distinétion between Verhaeren and the French 
Symbolistes holds good in other spheres than that of land- 


XV b 


INTRODUCTION 


blame Verhaeren for rhetoric and grandilo- 
quence (and they are not only Frenchmen) 
make the mistake of judging him by “ sym- 
boliste”’ standards. There is no denying that 
to pass, for instance, from Retté’s “ Grand 
vent” (Campagne Premiécre) to any of Ver- 
haeren’s poems on wind, is to pass out from 
the study of the philosopher on to a storm- 
swept moor. The Frenchman sees in the 
wind a disturber of nature, an angry intruder 
bringing war from distant lands, not Nature’s 
own anger, following her gentleness, as the 
righteous anger of a man succeeds his friend- 
ship. 

The critic, then, who approaches from this 
point of view, is forced to fall back on Vi¢tor 
Hugo for his parallel, and Hugo to the 
“‘symboliste”’ is anathema. Hugo is indeed 
always outside nature. Even giving him the 
credit that is his due—and this, at present, is 
rarely done—one cannot but feel that he sees 
scape. The ultra-subjeétivity of the latter’s love-poems, 
which celebrate one night of passion, one hour even, 
leave unexpressed the vital importance of sex to sex in 
the continuance of the race, are devoid entirely of that 


natural desire of male for female which gives Verhaeren’s 
frankness the purity of wind and rain, 


XV1 


INTRODUCTION 


in Nature a pageant, like any other mighty 
spectacle, and that he tells of her triumphant 
colouring as a looker-on would describe the 
uniforms and martial music of a procession.' 
Verhaeren feels himself a child of the wind 
and rain and sunshine; their moods are his 
moods, and as Wordsworth endowed his 
mountains with motive and idea, so the 
Flemish poet feels Nature has reasons for her 
anger or delight. 

The rhetorician loses the power to be 
simple. The pageant-seeker can see no beauty 
in quiet colouring. But Verhaeren has met 
neither of these fates. His poetry can be 


* Tancréde de Visan in his L’ Attitude du Lyrisme con- 
temporain gives a skilful study of Verhaeren, which shows 
more sympathy than is usually found in French criticism. 
Of the poet’s connection with symbolisme M. de Visan 
says: “‘ Verhaeren stands as the leader of the former of 
the two great movements springing from Victor Hugo, 
which ended, one in the lyricism from within, the lyricism 
of immanence, and the other, personified in Moréas, in 
the poetry of classicism.” He says further, when com- 
paring Hugo and Verhaeren, that while the former some- 
times loses himself in mere repetition of sounding words, 
the latter never allows eloquence or moral exhortation 
to swing his poetry over the boundaries of force into the 
gulf of bathos. 


XVI 


IN TROD UC LION 


more tempestuous, and also more profoundly 
calm, than that of any other modern writer. 
He can be tender as only great strength is 
tender. There is always dignity in his passion, 
even when there is most fire. Above all, he 
has reached the point when passion has be- 
come enduring. 

Some considerations of the love-poems shall 
close this brief homage toa noble poet. They 
are contained in three books—Les Heures 
Claires, Les Heures d’ Aprés-midi, and Les 
Heures du Soir, and when IJ read them I feel 
that perhaps these three books are the greatest 
he has written. ‘A celle qui vit 4 mes cétes”’ 
he dedicates these tremendous poems of love. 
He is the ideal lover, the man who has passed 
from the bewildered awakening of passion, 
through the triumph of conquest, to the quiet 
devotion and confidence that lasts for ever. 
He writes none of the forlorn and plaintive 
music of the self-pitying, hopeless swain. He 
fights his battle in silence, wins the woman he 
wants, and then with all thankfulness and all 
humility sings his love for her: 

J’étais si lourd, j’étais si las, 
J’étais si vieux de méfiance, 
XVIil 


rN ReoODUCTION 


Jétais si lourd, j’étais si las 
Du vain chemin de tous mes pas, 


Je méritais si peu la merveilleuse joie 

De voir tes pieds illuminer ma voie, 

Que j’en reste tremblant encore, et presque en pleurs 
Et humble a tout jamais en face du bonheur. 


* * * * * 
L’amour, oh! qu'il soit la clairvoyance 
Unique et l’unique raison du cceur, 
A nous, dont le plus fol bonheur 


Est d’étre fous de confiance. 
(Les Heures Claires.) 


In Les Heures d’Aprés-midi sounds a 
gentler note, a note of greater peace, after 
fifteen years’ love and confidence. The mys- 
tery has partly gone, but no disillusionment 
has come in its place: 


Je ne vois plus ta bouche et tes grands yeux 
Luire, comme un matin de féte, 
Ni, lentement, se reposer ta téte 

Dans le jardin massif et noir de tes cheveux. 


Tes mains chéres qui demeurent si douces 
Ne viennent plus comme autrefois 
Avec de la lumiére au bout des doigts 
Me caresser le front, comme une aube les mousses. 


+ * * * * 


xX1x 


PNR OD UCR nN 


Mais, néanmoins, mon cceur ferme et fervent te dit: 
Que m’importent les deuils mornes et engourdis, 
Puisque je sais que rien au monde 
Ne troublera jamais notre étre exalté 
Et que notre 4me est trop profonde 
Pour que l’amour dépende encore de la beauté. 


Finally, the poems of Les Heures du Soir— 
perhaps the most beautiful book of the three 
—show us the poet, a little weary after a life 
of crowded effort, now lingering in the garden 
among the flowers, now watching the flames 
on winter evenings, but with a heart still on 
fire with passionate memories. 


Mets ta chaise prés de la mienne 
Et tends les mains vers le foyer 
Pour que je voie entre tes doigts 
La flamme ancienne 
Flamboyer ; 
Et regarde le feu 
Tranquillement, avec tes yeux 
Qui n’ont peur d’aucune lumiére 
Pour quwils me soient encor plus francs 
Quand un rayon rapide et fulgurant 
Jusques au fond de toi les frappe et les éclaire. 
* * * * * 
Comme je t’aime alors, ma claire bien-aimée, 
Dans ta chair accueillante et pamée, 
Qui m’entoure a son tour et me fond dans sa joie! 
Tout me devient plus cher, et ta bouche et tes bras 
Et tes seins bienveillants ot mon pauvre front las 


XX 


a 


INTRODUCTION 


Aprés l’instant de plaisir fou que tu m’oétroies 
Tranquillement, prés de ton coeur reposera. 


There is one more short poem that I should 
like to quote in full, before leaving the poet 
in, what seemed, the gathering twilight of his 
perfect love-story : 

Avec mes vieilles mains de ton front rapprochées 

J écarte tes cheveux et je baise, ce soir, 


Pendant ton bref sommeil au bord de l’atre noir 
La ferveur de tes yeux sous tes longs cils cachée. 


Oh! la bonne tendresse en cette fin de jour! 
Mes yeux suivent les ans dont I’existence est faite 
Et tout a coup ta vie y parait si parfaite 

Qu’un émouvant respeét attendrit mon amour. 


Et comme au temps ot tu m’étais la fiancée, 
L’ardeur me vient encor de tomber a genoux 
Et de toucher la place ou bat ton coeur si doux 
Avec les doigts aussi chastes que mes pensées. 


Ill 
Berore the war Belgium was a synthesis of 
Europe. She contained every aspect of civili- 
zation: rolling farmlands, quiet, cloistered 
monasteries, thunderous railway _ stations, 
belching factories. Equally and terribly is 
she now the symbol of the German fury. 
Alike in her heroism and her agony does she 

XX1 


INTRODUCTION 


stand for the strength and suffering of the 
Allied cause. 

It is fitting then that Verhaeren also, in 
whom is the essence of every art, should at 
this time come forward and portray his mar- 
tyred country. To the reader his superb 
poetry is exhausting. It sweeps him away 
with the turbulence of its power, it awes 
him with its majesty, it soothes him with its 
tenderness. Like life it must be lived, because 
it is life. Werhaeren, more than any poet, is 
the prophet of “art for life’s sake,” for no 
man has loved life more than he has loved 
it, no man has wrenched from existence more 
variegated masses of joy and sorrow. 

He has stood on the hill top in the carnival 
of wind and sunshine, he has seen hunger, 
dirt and misery; he has known peace and 
love. Now, in his old age, has come to him 
the supreme and terrible experience of war. 
No man can wish for a better life than this, 
if it be granted to him, finally, his battles 
done, to sit by the fire with his soul at rest, 
while the storm weeps at the windows. 


M. T. H. SADLER: 


XX11 


LA BELGIQUE SANGLANTE 





LA BELGIQUE SANGLANTE 


EPUIS bientot trente ans 

Que par Ventente libre en un effort con- 
stant 

S’était comme augmentée 
LD’ humaniteé. 
La guerre 

Semblait aux hommes de ce temps 
Nétre plus guére 

Qwun vieux charnier caché, par les fleurs, sous 

la terre, 


Loccident était fier de penser sous les cieux 
D’apreés un ordre harmonieux 
Pareil au large accord des étiles tranquilles 
Et de voir jour a jour les plus belles idées 
S’ élucider 
Grdce au verbe de ceux qui parlatent dans les 
villes. 


Ils affirmaient que désormais 
L’homme a homme s opposerait 
Encor, mais dans la paix ; 


3 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


Que pareil a la séve enflant l’arbre et l’écorce 

Le droit élargirait Vappareil de la force; 

Que la justice était une arme et un besoin; 

Qwil fallait croire en son cerveau plus quen 
Son poing ; 

Qwune réalité plus haute et plus sereine 

Auratt servi de champ a toute vie humaine 

Que déja S annongait Pimminent avenir 

Ou les efforts rivaux devaient enfin 8 unir 

Tout comme au long des fils desmachines nouvelles, 

Deux courants opposés font tout a coup jaillir 

Grace a leur conflit méme, une unique étincelle. 


Ainst Sexaltatent-ils par les beaux soirs d’été, 
—Leurs gestes soutenant leurs paroles d’apé- 
tres— 
Ils se prouvaient fiers d’eux-mémes et fiers des 
autres 
Et comme heureux de leur témérité. 
Et l’Europe par dessus bois, fleuves, montagnes 
Leur envoyatt le cri de son assentiment, 
Et ce cri répété troublait étrangement, 
Au long du Rhin armé, les peuples d’ Allemagne. 


Pour eux, hélas, l’entente humaine était sans 
charmes 
Et nul réve ne leur semblait vaste et puissant 


4 


LA BELGIQUE SANGLANTE 


Que si les armes 
Rouges de sang 
Ne couvraient de leur bruit, tous les bruits de 
la terre. 


La haine organisée habitait leurs cerveaux, 

Ils travaillaient dans leurs usines militaires, 

Toujours & quelque meurtre effrayant et nou- 
veau. 

Ils étaient nets et prompts et durs, et le silence 

Couvrait l’euvre de mort de leur intelligence. 

En pleine paix, quand l'homme & homme est 
indulgent, 

Ils épiaient partout les choses et les gens: 

Quand ils savaient, ils se taisaient et atten- 
daient. 

Leurs maitres & penser savamment bavardaient, 

Mettant leur dogmatisme a la solde des crimes ; 

De laps en laps, quelqu’dpre et cruelle maxime 

Devenait leurs yeux la neuve vérite, 

Si bien qwils Sexergaient a la ferocité 

Au nom dune future et sinistre sagesse. 

Is tuaient la vie ample et immense ferveur 

Et l’essor libre et clair des volontés fécondes 

Et telle était leur mécanique et sombre ardeur 

Qwils paraissaient vouloir paralyser le monde. 


5 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


Ils le traitaient selon leur loi; 

Ils le pillaient et le briilaient avec la rage 
Qui remplace pour eux 1’ élan et le courage. 
Maisons belles, monuments clairs, nobles beffrois, 
Villes par la science et le temps consacreées. 
France foulée aux pieds et Belgique éventrée. 
Dites, quel deuil vous accablait en ces longs jours 
Ou l’incendte errait a travers vos contrées 

Et bondissait de tour en tour! 


Tandis que vous, vous vous battiez avec fierté 
Pour ceux de vos berceaux, et pour ceux de vos 
tombes, 
Eux ne songeaient qu’a rassembler des héca- 
tombes 
Pour déployer leur cruauteé, 


En des hameaux perdus et des bourgs solitaires. 
Ou passait le galop effréné des uhlans 

On a trouvé planté, dans la gorge des meres 

De longs couteaux couverts et de lait et de sang ; 
Des vieillards mis en rang au long d’une chaussée 
Ployerent les genoux pour recevoir la mort 

Au bord de fosses qu’ eux-mémes avaient creuseées ; 
Des filles de seize ans dont l’dme et dont le corps 


Etaient vierges et clairs subirent les morsures 
6 


LA BELGIQUE SANGLANTE 


Et les baisers sanglants et tvres des soldats, 

Et quand leur pauvre chair wétait plus que 
blessures 

On leur tranchatt les seins avec des coutelas. 


Partout,du fond des bourgs vers les villes voisines 
Les gens fuyaient avec des yeux épouvanteés 
De voir comme une mer immense de ruines 
Crouler sur le pays qu’tls avatent du quitter. 
Derriére eux sexaltait le tocsin fou des cloches, 
Et quand tls rencontratent quelque teuton frappé 
Par une balle adroite, au bord d’un chemin proche, 
Souvent ils découvratent, dans le creux de ses 
poches, 
Avec des colliers d’or et des satins fripés, 
Deux petits pieds d’enfant atrocement coupes. 


Oh! quel triste soleil fut le témoin, en Flandre, 
Et des hameaux en feu, et des villes en cendre 
Et de la longue horreur, et des crimes soudains 
Dont avait faim et soif, le sadisme Germain. 





CHAPTER I 
DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI 


HE Emperor William I has sworn 
many oaths. He swore that he would 
enter in triumph, now Paris, now Nancy, 
now Calais, now Warsaw. These oaths, which 
were in their way magnificent, he has not kept. 
But he swore another oath in his letter to 
Albert I, King of the Belgians. He swore to 
lay waste the land of Belgium. And this oath, 
the oath of a criminal, is the only one he has 
not broken. 

Before the war Belgium was a_ peaceful 
country, industrious, wealthy. She had been 
moulded gradually by the kindly hand of 
time. Twice in history her art had dominated 
Europe. First, in the fifteenth century, blazed 
far and wide the genius of Hubert and Jan 
van Eyck, of Memling, of Roger de la Pasture. 
These men with their school, Gérard David, 
Patinir, Henri Blés, Quentin Metzys, were 
the great gothic school of northern European 


9 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


art. On the banks of the Rhine they found 
pupils. Two old painters, Wilhelm and 
Stefan Lochner, who of themselves painted 
with naive timidity, acquired under the teach- 
ing of the Flemings, strong design, powerful 
colour, and above all vitality. Equally France 
came under the influence of the Flemish 
group. The schools of Avignon and Moulins 
owed to them their glory. Italy sent her 
artists to pay them tribute. The greatest of 
them, Antonello da Messina, forgot the tra- 
ditions of his own land to follow those of 
Flanders. Spain was, as it were, a mere 
dependency of Flemish art, which art also 
dominated the east. 

The second period of Belgian supremacy in 
art was in the seventeenth century. Then 
Rubens, Van Dyck, Brouwer, Teniers, Jor- 
daens, Cornelius de Vos, reconquered for 
Antwerp the world-domination which the 
painters of Bruges had lost. To this group 
France owes Largilliere, Sébastian Bourdon, 
Watteau, Pater, Lancret, Fragonard. England 
owes them Dobson and Lely, and, in part, 
Constable. 

Further, since the fifteenth century, the 

10 


DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI 


high-loom weavers spread over the whole 
continent a new art. The tapestries of Brussels 
are the finest in the world, and to them is 
owed the early glory of the Gobelins. 

In this same period of famous painters, 
Belgium had her noble architects. The stones 
of her cathedrals at Tournai, Brussels, Antwerp, 
Malines, Ghent, Bruges, Mons, and Liege, 
were laid one on another to the topmost 
pinnacles of their towers, so that the memory 
of their Flemish and Walloon builders might 
be carried to the clouds and there abide for 
ever. Wonderful town-halls rose side by side 
with the churches; stately cloth or meat 
markets faced the great houses of the burgo- 
masters and aldermen. The rumour of these 
towns grew and spread, and they became the 
wonder of the world. 

Along a great river, the Scheldt, which 
winds its way among the provinces of Flanders, 
wealth and trade spread from town to town, 
and one of the greatest ports of Europe, alike 
in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, Ant- 
werp, came into being on Belgian territory, 
though on the very threshold of both Holland 
and Germany. 

II 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


Another great river, the Meuse, flows 
through a district of beautiful, well-moulded 
valleys, among which tireless industry yielded 
coal and metals. From the banks of the 
Meuse came the stones which crown the lofty 
gables of the great houses, the transepts of 
the cathedrals. The Meuse is the river of 
Walloon industry, and the Scheldt is that of 
industrial Flanders. 

These two races of Belgium, one Latin, the 
other Germanic, so wonderfully disposed over 
the country and controlled by their respective 
rivers, are hard-working, tenacious, and mod- 
est. They also have each their patience—the 
Flemish taciturn, the Walloon genial and 
humorous. They have won for their country 
not only comfort but wealth. Standing in 
order after England, Germany, and France, 
but before Italy, Austria, and Russia, Belgium 
holds the fourth place among the commercial 
nations of Europe. Her prosperity, unique 
among the small nations of to-day, is proof 
positive of the gifts of her people. 

But there is still another side of her to be 
considered. Thirty years ago Belgium, until 
1880 endowed only with material wealth, 

12 


DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI 


produced a school of writers, whose brilliance 
was not long in winning a place among the 
intellectual forces of Europe. The spirit of 
the whole world was influenced and made 
nobler by Maeterlinck. He, like Carlyle and 
Emerson, has moulded the thought of his 
age, and trained its understanding and feeling 
after his own manner. Poems there were, some 
delicate and frail like those of Charles van 
Lerberghe, others vivid and_ intricately 
wrought, like those of Albert Giraud. 
Lemonnier, Eckhoud, Krains, Glesener, 
Delattre, showed themselves observers and 
thinkers either powerfully realistic or romantic. 
Spaak, Crommelynck, Delterne, Van Offel, 
strove to found a school of original and 
personal drama. In every department of art, 
alike in painting and literature, new life showed 
itself. Charles de Coster, the father of Belgian 
literature and author of its first masterpiece: 
Ty] Uelenspiegel, saw his pioneer work carried 
on by numerous young disciples. They in 
their turn wrote books that found places 
beside his in well-chosen libraries. They also 
found beauty in the storehouses of past life 
and heroism; but many of them, belonging 


“3 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


as they do to the modern age, have explored 
the soul of the modern world, and have 
written, if not with more emotion than de 
Coster, at least with greater reality and truer 
proportion. 


If ever, then, a community has shown itself 
worthy in loftiness and independence of life 
to make a part of European civilization, that 
community is the Belgian nation. She pos- 
sessed, if I may use the metaphor, a more 
complete armoury of weapons, material, in- 
tellectual and moral, that any other nation of 
her size. She had won the respect and ad- 
miration, not only of the smaller neutral states, 
but of the great sovereign nations of the world. 
And those sovereign nations had gone further ; 
they had sworn together to protect her. She 
had shown herself worthy of their protection, 
and never more so than on the day when one 
of her pledged protectors seized her treacher- 
ously by the throat and sought to strangle 
her. 

There lies the deepest shame of Germany. 
She chose that little nation most deserving of 
life and growth to suffer for the German 


14 


DE PROFUNDIS CLAMAVI 


opinion of the labour and existence of the 
non-German world. More than that, though 
infinitely stronger than Belgium—stronger 
by how many million men !—Germany did 
not even attack her face to face. She schemed 
and lied and even flattered. To within two 
hours of a cruel ultimatum she was breathing 
forth the purity of her intentions. She could 
have dared to offer open battle, but she 
preferred a treacherous ambuscade. And by 
this deed she has created against herself in the 
hearts of Belgians a hatred so passionate and 
so universal, that it will go down from gen- 
eration to generation to a depth that no man 
can foretell. So far as any human sentiment 
can be, this hatred will be eternal. It will 
become a part of the education of our primary 
schools, it will be a tradition in our families, 
an instinct in our homes. It will be for us a 
hallowed reserve of rage and vigour. We 
shall feel, all of us, as did a peasant with whom 
I had a brief but wonderful conversation, not 
long ago, in a coast-village between Coxyde 
and Dunkirk. He said: ‘ My wish is that 
when I am dying I may use the last reserve 
of my strength, which I shall have stored up 


Le 


BEE GIUMS AGONY 


inside me, to utter one more curse, one more 
word of hatred against the Germans.” I 
remarked that such feelings were far from 
Christian. He replied: “So much the worse!” 


CHAPTER II 
THE MARK OF THE TEUTON 


OU also may say, “‘ To hate is unchristian 
and wrong.” I agree with you. But must 
we not add that to hate is necessary? There 
must be hatred in battle. The fighter who 
does not hate will fight feebly and be beaten. 

Besides which, for us Belgians the instinct 
of national self-preservation lays hatred upon 
us henceforth as a duty. Only by love or by 
hatred do nations achieve great things, and 
our freedom isa great thing. But the Germans 
have given us no choice of mood, no choice 
between hatred and love in our fight against 
them. 

If ever oppression has been systematically 
brutal, it is theirs. They have waged no real 
war against us, they have been ravishers, 
thieves, pillagers, and assassins. Courageous 
enough in the actual battle, after each fight 
they have behaved like cruel cowards. Drunk 

17 € 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


with our wine they became the merest bandits. 
They practised upon us, among many other 
vices, that particular perversion which, as has 
been proved more than once by legal trial, is 
rife in the German barracks and officers’ clubs. 

Our Belgian women, our girls, our children, 
became the playthings of German lust. Some 
of the varieties of debauch were of such 
complicated vileness as to be almost incredible. 
The extremes of horror to which these warriors 
can go have benefited them to this extent, 
namely, that the world’s imagination will 
never wholly credit the perverted ingenuity 
they displayed in brutalizing Belgium. 

Now that reports alike trustworthy and 
careful have been published, general opinion 
is bestirring itself and examining seriously 
the charges brought. Already shameis apparent 
in Germany itself. 

When I first came to England, in the 
autumn of 1914, every story of atrocities was 
suspect. People said: “ That’s all very well, 
but show us the man who has had his hands 
cut off, or the woman with the mangled 
breasts.” And as it was unfortunately impos- 
sible to comply with this request, because the 

18 


fee MARK OF THE TEUTON 


man who had lost his hands, and the woman 
who had been mutilated had involuntarily 
died of their wounds, the sceptics concluded 
that the Germans were at least real soldiers 
and not murderers. ‘“ When we see, we will 
believe,” was their attitude. Alas, such proof 
could only have been given by digging in the 
earth and opening up the graves of the victims. 

To paint a complete picture of the German 
savagery in Belgium is, of course, impossible. 
Too many facts have escaped observation. 
Even those witnesses whose evidence can be 
checked are too numerous all to be quoted. It 
was principally at the beginning of the war, in 
the provinces of Li¢ge, Namur, Luxembourg, 
and Brabant, that the Teuton hordes were at 
their most barbarous. More recently, either 
because they were so commanded or because 
they were glutted with cruelty, they have kept 
down their evil instinés. Their fury lasted 
two or three months. Perhaps the deliberate 
purpose of giving free rein to the army’s rage 
was to annihilate the conquered race. Flanders 
was less violently and less persistently tortured 
than La Wallonie. The latter, by her very 
existence, was judged guilty. She was to blame 


a 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


for not belonging to the Germanic race. She 
was not, as Flanders was, a district where 
ultimately there was chance of the German 
domination being accepted. Theinvaders knew 
that in her they would find an implacable 
enemy. 

They have therefore not been satisfied with 
the devastation caused by their armies; they 
have now deliberately created a famine in 
southern Belgium. Now, in the full twentieth 
century and in Europe, there are cries of a 
people dying of hunger. Help pours in from 
all sides. America is splendid. But how far 
will these gifts go to satisfy the hunger of 
whole provinces? It is an unvarying rule that 
conquered territories must be provisioned by 
their conquerors. But the Germans recognize 
no duties in warfare. They are glad that those 
whom they have not been able to slaughter 
should die a death even more horrible. The 
fury against us felt by the German officers 
dates from the very day of the war’s beginning. 
We barred their road to France. The act had 
no meaning, no honesty to them. True to 
their traditions, they sought to buy us off. 
Calling our government, as it were, into the 

20 


THE MARK OF THE TEUTON 


room behind the shop, they asked, “‘ For how 
much?” And waited for the answer they 
expected, “ For thirty pieces of silver.” 

But the answer was given by Liege, and 
Liége infuriated them. They lost thousands 
of men; by no means were they able to force 
the instant passage which was so essential to 
them. Behind our defence France was mob- 
ilizing. For England and for Russia we gained 
a precious respite. 

The world jumped immediately to the 
conclusion that the fate of the war was already 
settling against Germany. Even this first 
check, given by a tiny nation in the cause of 
honour, was regarded as the death blow. 
Certainly there was talk of peace. Three 
separate times did Germany approach us with 
proposals. The first occasion was in August. 
M. Davignon, Belgian Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, received through our minister at The 
Hague a long telegram which contained the 
following sentence: “ The German govern- 
ment is ready to take any steps in order to 
have Belgium on her side in her war with 
France.”” Belgium’s reply was prompt and 
definite : 

21 


BELGIUM Ss: AGO BY. 


“True to herinternational duties, Belgium 
can only repeat her answer to the ultimatum 
of August 2nd. And this especially as, since 
that time her territory has been violated, a 
terrible war has been carried into her lands, 
and the guarantors of her integrity have 
promptly and loyally responded to her 
appeal for help.” 

Germany’s second attempt was through 
political channels in Belgium, but it failed as 
ignominiously as the first. 

The third of the peace proposals was made 
by M. Eyschen, a politician of Luxembourg, 
who toured the neutral states, persuading them 
to issue a joint appeal for peace between us 
and Germany. Sucha scheme could not have 
any result. Belgium, first of all, met it with 
a point-blank refusal. It could not be en- 
couraging to M. Eyschen to read ina Belgian 
newspaper : 

“If our government had wished it, we 
could have entered into negotiations with 
Germany. But our government did not 
so wish, and it will greet with the same 
refusal every ambassador or agent of the 
sovereign who, having invaded, devastated 

22. 


THE MARK OF THE TEUTON 


and shed the blood of Belgium, having 

mocked her through a bribed and corrupted 

press, has dared, three times in succession, 

to offer his victim a peace without honour.” 

So, after violating our neutrality, Germany 
behaved as though positions were reversed. 
It was she, the great nation, that made advances 
to the little nation she had despoiled and out- 
raged. She must have mistaken our power 
of resistance to decide thus rapidly to swallow 
her pride. In any case she acted with such 
characteristic delicacy and tact as to embarrass 
even her friends. Not fora moment did she 
suspect that a people who, in order to remain 
faithful to their honour, had not hesitated to 
undergo infinite sufferings and misery, would 
reject as an insult any talk of compromise or 
friendship. The Director of the Deutsche 
Bank, who was sent as emissary on the occasion 
of the second appeal, actually expostulated : 
“The Herr Baron von der Goltz is, after all, 
not a villain. He has no evil designs on 
Brussels. It would be so easy to talk 
matters over, and make some amicable ar- 
Faneement.. . .” 

Oh, the subtlety, the perception, the tact of 


23 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


the German diplomats! With what elephant’s 
feet do they pick their way about the great 
garden of human emotions! 

I have also heard that they said: 

“The Belgians should have accepted our 
peace propositions, even if it was only 
because they at least proved that we were 
sorry for the wrong we had done.” 

I do not know what blockhead uttered this 
argument, but his childish brain does not 
seem to have realized that Germany, stained 
with her crimes, will have very little right 
to plead repentance when she is deservedly 
chastised by the master-hand of the allies. 

Germany has vented her rage, not only on 
human beings, but also on inanimate objects. 
Wood, stone, thatch, metal-work, anything that 
could be used for shelter or refuge, bore the 
brunt of her fury. Her soldiers carried special 
naphtha grenades, special packets of pitch to 
fit them for arson as well as for rifle shooting. 
Deliberate burnings took place all over. In 
the province of Luxembourg alone: 

Neufchateau shows 21 houses burnt; 
Etalle, 30; Houdemont, 64; at Rulles half 
the houses have been destroyed by fire; the 


24. 


THE MARK OF THE TEUTON 


village of Ausart is entirely consumed; at 

Tintigny only 8 houses remain. Jamoigne 

is half destroyed ; also Les Bulles. At Noyen 

42 houses destroyed; Rossignol is entirely 

destroyed; Mussy la ville has 20 houses 

burnt; Bertrix, 15; at Bleid a great part of 
the village; at Signeulx a great part of the 
village; at Ethe five-sixths of the village 
have been burnt. Bellefontaine has 6 houses: 
burnt; Mussin, half the village; at Baranzy 

only 4 houses remain; at Maissin only 36 

out of 100; at Villance, 9. At Anlay 26 

houses have been burnt. 

Sorunsthe report. The figures are minima. 
By a computation necessarily incomplete, the 
number of houses destroyed by fire exceeds 
3,000. In every case, let it be noted, the 
houses were destroyed, not by the inevitable 
processes of warfare, but by deliberate and 
systematic incendiarism. 

In Flanders and Brabant, Termonde, Ma- 
lines, Alost, Aerschot, Dixmude, Nieuport, 
Ypres, Louvain are now mere ruins. They 
have been bombarded and rebombarded. The 
Belgian army had only to inflié the slighest 
check on the Germans, for the latter to shower 


25 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


their shells once more either on Termonde, 
Malines, or Alost. The action suggests the 
punishment inflicted by some sinister school- 
master. Always it was methodical, for every- 
thing is rigidly disciplined in Germany, even 
madness. 

And these innumerable blazing towns shone 
like great torches on the doing of other deeds 
of crime. First, there were wholesale exe- 
cutions: 

At Dinant 700 civilians were slaughtered ; 
at Andennes every official, and nearly all the 
prominent citizens, La Wallonie ran blood 
in her every village and her every town. In 
the province of Luxembourg alone, where 
so many houses were destroyed, the tale of 
murdered folk runs as follows: At Neuf- 
chAteau, 18 were shot; at Vance, 1; at Etalle, 
30; at Houdemont, 11; at Tintigny, 157; 
at Bertrix, 2; at Ethe, 300 (while in all 
530 persons have disappeared). At Latour 
only 17 men survive; at St. Léger 11 were 
shot; at Maissin, 10 men, 1 woman and a 
girl were shot, and 2 men and 2 young 
girls wounded. At Villance 2 men were 


shot, and 1 girl wounded; at Anlay 52 men 
26 


aoe MARK OF THE TEOTON 


and women were shot; at Claireuse 2 men 

were shot and 2 hung. 

After wholesale murder came wholesale de- 
portation. Every man strong enough to work, 
gardeners, wood-cutters, miners, peasants, 
were sent off to work in Germany. The in- 
vaders succeeded thus in reviving the ancient 
custom of slavery. Terrible was the treat- 
ment these poor men received. The whip is 
a German national institution. The German 
eagle might be depicted holding it in his claws, 
as the American eagle grasps the lightning. 

Stolen goods in piles were carried off over 
the Rhine—pictures, furniture, mirrors, pianos. 
Captain de Gerlache—the same who conducted 
the Belgian Antarétic expedition—has de- 
scribed in the Norwegian paper “ Morgen 
Bladet,” the sights he saw. His statements 
are supported by photographs taken by him- 
self. At Malines the station was blocked with 
700 pianos taken from the pillaged houses of 
the town. One of his friends, an important 
official, returning home, finds his house has 
been sacked. He asks to see the German 
governor. His neighbours have assured him 
that a party of German soldiers came pur- 


27 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


posely to ransack his home. ‘“ They were 
peasants,’ puts in the governor. ‘They were 
your officers,” replies the victim. The gov- 
ernor consents to follow the Belgian official 
to the station. There they discover the stolen 
goods. They have gone to swell the vast 
pile of belongings filched from neighbouring 
houses. 

This story is typical. I could tell a hundred 
others. 

Burning houses, stolen possessions, human 
beings driven into captivity, are a mere back- 
ground for the better setting of the horrors 
which take the front of the stage. And this 
foreground is devoted entirely to the torture 
of old men, of women, and of children. 
Germany, for all her customary heavy clumsi- 
ness, developed, of a sudden, an amazing in- 
genuity. Cruelty stimulates her. A kind of 
horrible lyricism seizes her. She wallows in 
frightfulness. 

German military usage—and the word is 
not used lightly—demands that an old man 
should walk in front of the soldiers, when 
they are going under fire. If, instead of this, 
the old man is judged likely to be of more - 

28 


THE MARK OF THE TEUTON 


value as a hostage, German military usage 
deems it good to kill his sons before his eyes 
and to maltreat him to the utmost limit of 
exhaustion. If, again, a considerable number 
of old men are made prisoners, German milit- 
ary usage lays down that they shall be placed 
in a single line, forced to dig their own graves 
just behind the place at which they are ordered 
to stand, and then that they shall be shot in 
such a way that the bodies fall, of themselves, 
into the holes made. If, finally, the old man 
is a priest or a monk, German military usage 
recommends that he be first flogged and then 
hung. 

In the case of women, German military 
usage inevitably orders rape or violation as a 
preliminary. Husband, brother, and child 
having been done to death, the wife, the sister, 
or the mother is given a spade and told to 
bury her dead. Pregnant women unfailingly 
receive the bayonet thrust in the womb. A 
woman engaged to be married is forcibly 
made one with her fiancé, bound tightly with 
cords and set in a pile of trusses of straw. A 
match is struck on a boot-sole, the straw 
crackles and blazes, and the young people end 


=o 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


their embrace in death. For women who are 
not pledged to marry, the German soldiers 
have another form of procedure. The follow- 
ing anecdote, proved and vouched for by the 
French Minister of war, may serve as example. 
The story has been related by Jean Bernard 
in the “Indépendance” for 2 January 1915. 

The scene is a country-house near Antwerp. 
A merchant of the city has chosen to remain 
in his home, with his two daughters, aged 
respectively twenty and seventeen years. Both 
are beautiful, with that placidly joyful beauty 
that has distinguished Flemish women from 
the time of Rubens onwards. After the fall 
of Antwerp, the Germans spread about the 
neighbourhood and several officers quarter 
themselves on the merchant, who has had the 
rash courage to stay on in his country house. 
Being a man of means he receives them with 
all the hospitality possible. The most com- 
fortable bedrooms are given up to them; for 
the first evening an abundant dinner 1s pre- 
pared. Five German officers sit down to this 
meal, at which there is every promise of 
plentiful wine as well as food. Unfortunately, 
however, drunkenness cannot be pleaded in 


30 


tHe MARK OF THE TEUTON 


their defence. Before the feast begins at all, 
the German captain, the oldest and senior 
officer of the five, orders the owner of the 
house to be thrust into his own cellar, and 
the door guarded by two sentinels with loaded 
rifles and instructions to shoot, if necessary. 

This precaution having been taken, the 
two girls are commanded by the revellers to 
undress. They protest, resist, implore. All 
in vain. As answer to their prayers the captain 
orders some of his men to strip them naked 
and hold them during the meal before the 
leering eyes of the diners. At last, sated with 
eating and pleasingly drunk, the savages, 
before the amused eyes of common soldiers, 
themselves reeling with drink, take the two 
poor children for their amusement. You will 
forgive me for not reproducing here the fur- 
ther details quoted by the Minister of War. 
It is enough to say that when, the following 
morning, the merchant was set free from his 
prison, his daughters had been handed over 
to the tender mercies of the common soldiery. 
One had gone raving mad; the other has since 
killed herself in shame and grief. 

German military usage has methods also of 


ae 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


dealing with children. They have little hands 
that are delightfully easy to cut off. Their 
feet are barely attached to their legs at all. A 
little blood-spilling and the thing is done. 
But there are refinements. M. le Senateur 
Henry Lafontaine — Nobel prizeman and 
famed for moderation and _pacificism—has 
testified in a public meeting that children’s 
nostrils and children’s ears have been burnt 
with the flaring stumps of lighted cigars. 
The babe in the cradle is, of course, an 
ideal victim. He can be tortured and will 
tell no tales. I know well that one habit of 
German military usage is to deny proven facts 
and attribute the crimes immediately to the 
other side. But this method becomes daily 
less practicable. Too many horrors have been 
committed. The loathing roused is too deep 
and too universal. Too many mouths are 
crying aloud for vengeance. Their noise over- 
bears and drowns the muttering of lies. It 
has become necessary for Germany to admit 
the least tinge of shame, the least suspicion 
of dishonour. So, German military usage now 
protests that a few examples had to be made, 
because the civil population fired on the 


32 


THE MARK OF THE TEUTON 


soldiery. It is unexplained in what way little 
children, young girls, or even old men could 
have assaulted the officers. As for the able- 
bodied men, they had handed over all their 
arms to the authorities of their communes; 
even sporting guns had been given up. One 
is forced to conclude that the shots, if any 
were fired, came from the Belgian or French 
armies in fair fight, or perhaps from the 
Germans themselves. M. Emile Van der 
Velde, Minister of State, has recently read 
aloud in public in London a letter from a 
German officer, who admits that at Huy a 
quarrel broke out among his own men and a 
shot was fired which killed a German soldier. 
Of course, the result was a massacre of the 
native civilians. What happened at Huy, 
concluded M. Van der Velde, happened at 
Louvain and at many places besides. 

But why trouble to meet even this charge? 
What repressive measures can possibly justify 
the orgy of savagery and hate in which the 
invaders of Belgium wallowed? It is in the 
German charaéter that reasons for such bar- 
barity must be sought. Like some evil de- 
formity of the brain, unfit for the light of day, 


os a 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


does that character now appear to Europe. The 
empire of William II has hired as mercenaries 
all the old curses of the world. ‘From plague, 
pestilence and famine, good Lord deliver us.” 
Like our ancestors, we Belgians can utter that 
prayer to heaven. But to us the words mean 
one thing and one alone—Germany. 


34 


CEUX DE LIEGE 





CEUX DE LIEGE 


UT la guerre mortelle et sacrilége 
Broyer notre pays de combats en combats 
Famais sous le soletl, une dme wn oubliera 
Ceux qui sont morts, pour le monde, la bas 
A Liege 


Ainst qu'une montagne 
Qui marcherait et laisserait tomber par chocs 
Ses blocs, 
Sur les villes et les campagnes 
S’avangait la pesante et féroce Allemagne. 


Ce fut un tragique moment 

Les gens fuyaient vers linconnu, éperdiment ; 
Seuls ceux de Liége réststerent 
AA ce sinistre écroulement 

D’ hommes et d’armes sur la terre. 


S’ils agirent ainst, 
C'est qwils savatent qu’entre leurs mains étaient 
remis 


37 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


Le sort 
Et d’ Athénes et de Rome, et de la France claire, 
Et qu'il fallait que leurs efforts 
Apres 8 étre acharneés se doublassent encor 
En des efforts plus sanguinaires. 


Peu importait 
Qu’en ces temps sombres, 
Contre l’innombrable empire qu ils affrontaient 
Ils ne fussent qu'un petit nombre; 
A chaque heure du jour 
Deéfendant et leur ville, et ses forts tour a tour 
Ils livratent cent combats parmi les inter- 
valles ; 
Ils tuatent en courant, et ne se lassatent pas 
D’ensanglanter le sol a chacun de leurs pas 
Et d’étre prompts sous les raffales 
Des balles. 
Méme lorsque la nuit, dans le ciel sulfureux, 
Un Zeppelin rodeur passait au-dessus d’eux 
Les désignant aux coups par sa brusque lumteére, 
Nul ne reculait, fut-ce d’un pas, en arricre; 
Mais tous ils bondissaient d’un si farouche élan 
En avant, 
Que la place qwils occupaient demeurait vide 


Quand y frappait la mort rapide. 
38 


CEUX DE LIEGE 


A l’attaque, sur les glacts, 
Quand, rang par rang se présentaient les ennemis 
Sous l’éclair courbe et régulier des mitrailleuses, 
Un tir serré qui tout 2 coup se dilatait 

Immensément les rejetatent 

Et rang par rang les abattait 

Sur la terre silencteuse. 


Chaudfontaine et Longin et Boncelle et Barchon 
Retentissaient du bruit d’acier de leurs cou- 
poles, 
Ils assumaient la nuit, le jour, sur leurs épaules 
La charge et la tonnerre et Veffrot des canons. 
A nos troupes couchées 
Dans les tranchées, 
Des gamines et des gamins 
Distribuaient le pain 
Et rapportaient la biere 
Avec la bonne humeur indomptée et guer- 
riere. 
On y parlait d’exploits, accomplis simplement ; 
Et comme, & tel moment, 
Le plus jeune des régiments 
Fit, o tel point, fureur, carnage, et foudroyment 
Que jamais troupe de guerre 
Ne fut plus ferme et plus terrible sur la terre. 


39 


BELGIUMS AGONY 


La ville entiere s exaltait 
De vivre sous la foudre; 

D’héroisme sy respirait 
Comme la poudre ; 

Le ceur bumain sy composait 
D’une neuve substance, 

Et le prodige y grandissait 
Chaque existance. 

Tout sy mouvait dans ordre intense et sur- 
humain. 


O vous, les hommes de demain, 
Dit la guerre mortelle et sacrilege 
Nous avoir écrasés dans un dernier combat, 
Famais, sous le soleil, une dme woubliera 
Ceux qui sont morts pour le monde, la bas, 


vi Ttege. 


40 


CHAPTER III 
BEEGIAN PRIDE 


T is the duty of Belgians to-day, however 

terrible their misfortunes have been, not 

to sink to mere complaining nor to dwell on 

their misery, but to prove themselves worthy 

of their soldiers, who have been, one and all, 
heroes. 

The lamentations of women driven from 
their homes, forced to tread the highways of 
famine, flight, and exile, their children clinging 
to their skirts, are justified and truly pitiable. 
But it is not fitting that men, especially men 
who can think and act, should echo these 
cries, already somewhat over-prolonged. 

In times before the war, those of us who 
dreamed of a greater Belgium had no visions 
of territorial expansion in Europe, nor of a 
colonial empire in Africa. What we pictured 
was a rebirth of Belgium, a rebirth essentially 
of the mind and spirit. We pictured certainly 


41 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


an ever-growing activity of trade and industry, 
but our desire was even more for a greater 
modernity and vitality of thought. We sought 
for Belgium the power of influence rather 
than of conquest. 

And now we see the influence of Belgium 
stronger than it has ever been. It is true that 
for the moment our factories are silent, ap- 
parently deprived of the panting breath which 
is their life. But no one really thinks them 
dead. As soon as the war is over they will 
spring to life again, the wonderful monsters 
that they were before. The weight of dust and 
ashes that now covers them will be a light 
burden to their thousands of tentacles, when 
once again they spring, in their twisted energy, 
to the light of day. 

As ever, we Belgians shall be young and 
keen. Until to-day our nation has known no 
danger. We were too sure of the morrow. We 
lived like rich people who had no knowledge 
of want. War, we thought, was the business 
of others. 

But war has come upon us, fierce and 
terrible, when least we expected it. Like a 
great mountain, crashing downward, the em- 


42 


BELGIAN PRIDE 


pireof William Hohenzollern has overwhelmed 
us. We were alone; we were few. We were 
attacked with treachery and lies. Into the old 
forts of Liege we threw ourselves in desperate 
haste. We had, as it were, to invent courage 
and resource for ourselves; we had to manu- 
facture a tragic spirit of resistance. All that 
we did in a day, an hour, a moment. And in 
that moment we won the admiration of the 
world. 

Oh, what unforgettable impromptus were 
that courage and that glory! Some of us, 
seeing the little bands of men leaving for the 
frontier, could not but doubt. “ They will be 
but fodder for cannon. We have no army, no 
generals, no fortresses.” 

And four days later a name, unknown a few 
hours ago, was in every mouth. The boys in 
the streets dressed up as General Leman. 
Girls sold his portrait in every town. The 
personality of a true General had stamped 
itself upon the mind of everyone. Nor was 
this all. The same little bands of soldiers, 
whom we had pitied as destined only to feed 
the hostile cannon, came to Brussels, their 
hands full of Prussian sabres, at once timid 


43 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


and triumphant, still unconvinced of the great 
part they had just played. The women kissed 
them; the men carried them in triumph. 

One of them, when a “Taube” hovered 
threateningly over Brussels, thrust into the 
air a Prussian eagle, torn from some German 
helmet, and, with a laugh of mocking rage, 
taunted the aviator to come down and fetch 
it. Splendid moments, alive with all the fever 
of pride! The weather was brilliant, the very 
air seemed golden. One breathed in heroism 
with the sunlight. 

These early triumphs of Liége, and those 
that followed at Haelen and the Yser, have 
won for Belgium the eternal honour, respect 
and admiration of all. For three months we 
have held the vast German armies in our 
country; the armies that allotted to us three 
days. With the most convincing arguments 
of all we have challenged the dogma of their 
invincibility. We have caused them their 
first losses. Like moving blocks, the men 
thrust elbow to elbow against each other, 
they advanced towards the glacis of our 
forts. Before giving the actual assault, to- 
gether they shouted—“ Kaiser!” “Kaiser!” 


44. 


BELGIAN PRIDE 


And the Belgian guns answered them. They 
fell, row upon row, like dominoes. Some- 
times the swift flashlight of a cruising airship 
lit up their agony. A great murmuring groan 
spread along the lines, died away and gave 
place to the silence of death. 

The force of our resistance gave time to 
France and to England to arm themselves, 
to perfect their organization, but it is not 
for us to harp on this. More important still 
is what lies behind. 

Our handful of soldiers at Liege and at 
Haelen represented, unconsciously of course, 
a great past of cultured civilization. If the 
French-speaking race is the incarnation of 
both Greece and Rome, we can assert that 
these soldiers of ours defended and upheld 
their inherited traditions, at the moment 
when they were most seriously threatened. 
That is why this simple act of courage is so 
great. We need not dread comparing their | 
exploit to the deeds at Thermopyle. At 
Liége, as in Sparta, a handful of men saved 
the world. 

With the memory of this supreme service 
rendered to Western civilization in our 


45 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


minds, we should have no feeling but pride. 
Tears dishonour us. Let us rather be thank- 
ful that Belgium, of all the countries, was 
chosen to do this wonderful deed, was 
privileged to be the first and the most 
vital rampart of modern civilization against 
savagery and brutal aggression, and that her 
name in future will be joined to those few 
small nations whose fame is immortal. Let 
us further rejoice that in these tremendous 
days our people have lived with an intensity 
that makes all our past existence as a nation 
seem valueless in comparison. It seems that 
before this sudden baptism of fire we were 
hardly a nation at all. We frittered away our 
strength in petty squabbles; we argued over 
words instead of facts; we blamed each other 
for being Walloon or Flemish; we busied 
ourselves as lawyers, business men, officials, 
instead of striving before all to be proud and 
free citizens of one State. Danger rather 
than safety has been our cure. We have 
discovered ourselves. So strong is the union, 
so tenacious the bonds of a common resist- 
ance that now bind us together, that to many 
minds Belgium dates only from yesterday, 


46 


BELGIAN ‘PRIDE 


and has never felt herself so real, so living 
as when, deprived of her land, she has, as 
rallying point for her national consciousness, 


only her King. 


47 


CHARTER TY 
ALBERT THE WELL-BELOVED 


HOSE who knew him before he came 

to the throne, though they believed firmly 
in him, yet wondered a little how he would 
develop. He comes of a royal stock that have 
always reached a late maturity. Leopold I 
won his reputation as European arbitrator at 
the age of fifty ; Leopold II was at first kept 
in check by his famous ministers, Rogier and 
Frere-Orban, and he had to throw off their 
tutelage before he could stand out as the man 
who, by bringing Western civilization into 
Africa, gave the world, as it were, the gift of 
a new continent. Alike, the first and second 
kings of Belgium started their public careers 
with diffidence and hesitation. 

What awakening was in store for their suc- 
cessor? As Crown Prince, Albert gave his 
attention to social and military questions. He 
talked sparingly, but no one who had the 


48 


ALBERT THE WELL-BELOVED 


privilege of speaking with him could fail to 
notice the thoroughness with which he had 
studied and learnt. As King, he would cer- 
tainly have carried through vigorous reforms, 
both economic and democratic. Indeed, he 
was plainly heading towards striking changes 
when suddenly the war broke upon us. 

I shall never forget that fourth of August, 
nineteen hundred and fourteen. I saw the 
King go into the Parliament House and I saw 
him coming out. He had taken counsel with 
the representatives of his people, on the eve of 
his and their blood-stained Easter Day. 

And indeed it was, for us Belgians, nothing 
short of an Easter morning. It was our re- 
surrection. War was upon us. Everywhere 
was fear and anguish. On our frontier a 
torrent of men and munitions threatened the 
old defences of Liége. We were a handful 
against a multitude, and could have no hope 
of victory ; only in resisting as best we might 
lay our chance of glory. We did our duty, 
and in the simple doing of it we were born 
again. Pride, determination, courage, self- 
denial, all the qualities which had lain hidden 
under our riches and our prosperity, sprang 


49 B 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


suddenly to light. In a few weeks the little 
Belgian people became a great nation. 

The word “motherland” had been for most 
of us a mere catchword for official harangues 
and popular songs. We were very far from 
being Chauvinist. Indeed, a large number of 
our best citizens actually regretted that they be- 
longed to so tiny acountry. Some would have 
preferred to be French, others English, others 
even—those whom we called Flamingants— 
German. To-day all such regrets and longings 
have vanished. We are all Belgians and ask 
nothing better; Belgians, fiercely almost, and 
until death. For our country is now our 
religion. 

And our King is the symbol of this resur- 
rection of Belgium. Alone, of all the kings 
and emperors concerned in this war, he has 
been one with his soldiers, sharing their 
danger and their glory. He has lived in the 
trenches, eating and smoking as his simple 
troopers eat and smoke; he has shown a quiet 
courage, a resistance, and a strength at once 
vigorous and profound. Among his generals 
and his officers he has more than once shown 
the qualities of a far-sighted and forceful tac- 


5° 


ALBERT THE WELL-BELOVED 


tician; his suggestions have been adopted and 
have proved successful. The darker and more 
cruel was the outlook, the more reliable and 
decisive has he shown himself to be. The 
war might have been made solely that Albert 
could come to a consciousness of himself, that 
he might leave behind him his hesitation and 
his reserve, and take his place, not after but by 
the side of his noble predecessors. Leopold I 
was a diplomat; Leopold II was a colonizer 
and a business man; Albert has shown him- 
self a soldier. 

He is as triumphantly a soldier as the 
German Emperor is not. From the outset of 
the war this has been clearly evident. Their 
very proclamations were different. William], 
with his mystic rhetoric and parade of literary 
grandiloquence, strives to impose himself by 
wonder and not by sharing in the fight. 
Albert’s words are few and sincere. He 
speaks in order himself to take a gun and 
hasten to meet the enemy. From him come 
no appeals to heaven; he goes neither as 
God’s ambassador nor the favourite of the 
Virgin Mary. He puts a simple trust in 
Providence and, for the rest, relies on his 


Le! 


BEL GLUN SAG ONG 


own courage and on the strength of his 
arm. 
For him no basking in the gaudy flattery 
of a court. For him no schemes of triumphal 
entries; he is no Lohengrin at the royal 
yacht’s prow. Sparing of words, he strikes 
no useless attitudes. He even prefers going 
on foot to horseback. 

In manner he is gentle, difident. He wel- 
comes you with a cheery handshake. Con- 
versation begins slowly, but once the banalities 
and embarrassments of the first words are left 
behind, it thrives and develops. The King is 
informed on all subjects. He is no poet, but 
he will recall a verse here and there remem- 
bered in his reading. The Belgian artistic re- 
naissance of recent years has found him a warm 
and enthusiastic supporter. He understands 
and helps. He is the first of our kings to 
make mention of art in a speech from the 
throne. 

Albert I is beloved by the mass of his 
people as a “beau gars.’’ No King-cripple will 
ever be popular in Belgium. Our sovereign 
must be able to wield a sword in both hands. 
Albert is massive and healthily large. He 1s 


$2 


ALBERT THE WELL-BELOVED 


the incarnation of the Flemish and Walloon 
idea of beauty, which is never separated from 
strength. His people know that, at need, 
their King would be a stalwart boon-companion 
at the Kermesses. No nation is more attached 
to the idea of equality than the Belgians. The 
pomp and arrogance of the Germans are in- 
tolerable to us. Only to see in Brussels a 
German officer pass by, especially to see the 
solemn prancing of the goose-step, is sufficient 
to realize that the popular commonsense of 
the Bruxellois condemn such sights as the 
posturing of folly itself. Albert is a soldier 
without parade or mannerism. His simplicity 
is exactly the quality that commands the great- 
est love and veneration. No one can impose 
admiration on the Belgians; they give it to 
whom they will. 


In the achievement of his popularity, rapid 
from the beginning and by now strikingly 
established, the King has been throughout 
helped by his wife. She understood immedi- 
ately the actions, the words, the virtues that 
her position demanded. Her weapons were 
shyness, gentleness, and tact. She was be- 


53 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


loved of artists as well as of the common 
people. She is herself a musician, but her 
interest and love for art embraced also litera- 
ture and painting. She surrounded herself 
with carefully chosen pictures and statues, 
whose creators were among her friends. In 
the royal palace at Brussels she had furnished 
three or four of the salons after her own taste. 
The gilding, the pillars, the lustres, the official 
candelabra were all swept away. The walls 
were decorated in plain colours, and on them 
with penetrating taste she hung a few pictures 
by young Belgian artists. These pictures she 
would defend against attacks, and those who 
were fortunate enough to be able to talk frankly 
with her knew that she was interested in any 
genuine artistic novelty. She asked nothing 
better than to be convinced by fresh ideas. 
This war has shown to the world the extent 
to which she, more than anyone else, helped 
the King. She was at his side during those 
tragic days when Antwerp was besieged ; and 
later, while tremendous battles were thundering 
along the Flemish coast, she stayed faithfully 
by the side of the man who is at once her 
husband and her friend. In appearance she is 


54 


ALBERT THE WELL-BELOVED 


slight, almost fragile, but how eager and fear- 
less is the spirit that animates her frail body! 

One hour before she was leaving Brussels 
for Antwerp, it was my privilege to pay her 
a visit. Her palace, into which, three days 
later, the enemy was to enter in triumph, was 
half turned into a hospital. She expressed 
the determination to pay one last visit to the 
wounded soldiers. She was calm, imperturb- 
able; no word of complaint or even sadness 
passed her lips. And after this final visitation 
she went out in all the strength of faith to 
meet the unknown. 

The future should indeed smile on such a 
Queen and on sucha King. Gloomy German 
historians in vain deny the nobility of their 
actions and their thoughts; for the admiration 
and affection of their united people will go 
with them down the ages. On their side they 
have youth, strength of purpose, suffering, 
unconquerable courage of soul. In themselves 
they are splendid. They have already their 
page of history, they will soon have their 
chapter of legend. 


55 


CHAPTER V 


THE LITTLE VILLAGES OF 
FLANDERS 


NGLAND is a vast meadow, sprinkled 
here and there with spaces of tillage. 
Flanders is like a chess-board, the various 
squares of which are covered with rye, wheat, 
oats, flax and clover. From scattered farms, 
little red-roofed, white-gabled buildings, with 
their green doors and shutters, their clean, 
warm stables, comes the cheerful noise of 
flails threshing the wheat, of wheels ginning 
the flax. 

Life is a simple and peaceful thing in these 
villages. The church is, as it were, the palace 
of God. Many coloured statues of the saints, 
gold, silken banners are lavished on its beau- 
tifying. The organ plays daily for those who 
wish to hear. On great festivals the altars 
are loaded with silver candlesticks, the finest 
vestments adorn the shoulders of the priests, 

56 


THE VILLAGES OF FLANDERS 


the best voices of the district thunder the 
Christmas hymn or the Easter alleluia. A 
quiet reverence rules over all, Every cere- 
mony has its beauty, and their joyful dignity 
affects the life of the tiniest hamlet. 

The beauty of Flanders is the mellow 
beauty of many centuries. Everywhere may 
be found firmly established traditions or his- 
torical masterpieces. In every little church a 
picture, either Gothic or Renaissance, recalls 
the age of Van Eyck or of Rubens. The 
subject may be the coronation Of av fair 
Virgin, or the ascent to heaven, surrounded 
by angels, of a splendid Christ. The saints 
are represented, garlanded with roses. The 
Holy Families are Flemish families, living 
quietly prosperous lives in cool white rooms, 
with their bird in its cage or their parrot on 
its perch. 

Such is the decorative side of the Flemish 
village. In aétual plan it consists probably of 
a single principal street, in which live the 
lawyer, the doétor and the brewer; and a few 
smaller roads which branch off from the main 
street as from the trunk of a tree. Wherever 
such a side-road joins the main street, a statue 


57 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


of the Virgin Mother of Jesus stands in a 
niche of the wall, and it is the constant care 
of the ladies of the village, the wives of the 
lawyer, the doctor and the brewer, to keep 
each shrine in Spring well-adorned with fresh 
flowers. 

Once a week the market is held in the 
square or round about the church. The 
farmers come to sell their milk and butter; 
their boys bring in young pigs, and some- 
times sheep; the vendors of cloth display 
their little stocks. The business done is 
small enough, no doubt, and its basis narrow, 
but the markets at least create a certain weekly 
excitement and keenness of rivalry. 

But at the Kermesses this excitement and 
keenness becomes a kind of madness. In 
every cabaret is the sound of music. Dancing- 
halls open on every side. Harsh and violent 
orchestras—a cornet, a violin, a clarionet, a 
trumpet—flog into swirling motion a hundred 
sturdy couples. Quadrilles follow polkas or 
waltzes, and the dancers stamp with their 
heels so violently that often the tiles of the 
floor are split in two. Drunkenness and 
anger play their part at these times of wild 


58 


THE VILLAGES OF FLANDERS 


pleasure. Knives flash out in quarrel, and 
often bloody work is done. The farm-lads 
fighting for wenches’ favours; the lovers 
quarrelling, the old men, feverish with drink, 
present, almost unchanged, the violent orgies 
painted so long ago by Brouwer and Cresbeke. 

Such is, or rather such was, before the 
Germans came, the life of the little villages 
of Flanders, Brabant, Hainault and Liege. 
But anyone who might see these districts 
now would find it hard to believe in such 
a past. 

The newspapers keep the world informed 
of the fate of the towns; but they do not 
trouble themselves about the tiny villages, 
hidden away in the heart of the country. I 
know secret corners in the Ardennes, in la 
Hesbaye, in la Famenne, in le Borinage, in 
Flanders, in Brabant, where the peasants are 
literally starving to death. In time of peace 
they live, these poor folks, on the produce 
of their little farms. They kill their pig, 
cure it and eat it slowly, week by week, 
throughout the winter. They have their 
little store of potatoes in their cellar and 
their twenty sacks of corn in their barn. For 


59 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


years and years they have always lived thus. 
Their whole world is their little house, tucked 
away, over there in the distant country. It 
represents all their treasure, all their liveli- 
hood. They toil all the summer so that 
bread and meat shall not be wanting in the 
hard times of winter. They are, as it were, 
a Providence to themselves. They hope and 
are confident. They cannot conceive any law, 
divine or human, depriving them of what 
they have reaped and garnered, of the living 
they have amassed, lawfully and by their own 
toil, for their wives and children. 

When the war began little groups of 
Uhlans began appearing in the villages. They 
would stop and ask a few questions and then 
go on somewhere else. At present they be- 
haved mildly enough. Well aware of the 
danger of ambushes, they were gentle and 
genial. They seemed to regard the people 
almost as their friends. Fear bred in them 
excellent manners. 

But later on, when whole regiments passed 
the way that hitherto only scattered Uhlans 
had trod, the true German arrogance made 
its terrible appearance. There was looting 

60 


THE VILLAGES OF FLANDERS 


and worse; there was massacre. Conciliatory 
fear gave way to savagery. The world knows 
now how much blood must be shed, how 
many ruins must be piled one on another, 
before German anger can be assuaged. 

And now that the fires have smouldered 
out, now that the little villages are once more 
left lonely, and those of their inhabitants who 
have escaped flame and sword are left there to 
exist as best they may, it is for us to think 
for a moment of the sinister silence of those 
abandoned lives, lingering on in the little 
towns and, more tragic still, lost in the depths 
of the countryside. 

Here, in the fog of London, I sit and picture 
to myself the agony of one of those little 
villages of Campine or of the Ardennes, over 
there, hidden among the valleys or lost in the 
marshes. Every one of those sources of live- 
lihood of the poor peasants, which I have 
described, has been requisitioned or frankly 
stolen. Their few poor cows have been killed. 
Their sow, who once like some prolific savage 
beast dawdled among the manure and filth of 
the farmyard with her squealing turbulent 
litter, has been snatched away these three 


61 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


months. In payment was given a ticket, a 
ticket of exchange valid ina distant land. But 
this is not all. Their sacks of corn have been 
brought from their barns, their turnips have 
been taken away from the pits in which they 
were kept. Their straw and hay have become 
the property of the invading cavalry, who, no 
sooner had they taken what they needed, 
hastened away. The farmsteads are stripped 
bare; only their inhabitants remain, deprived 
of everything. Even their bed-coverings, their 
poor mattresses, their bedsteads have been 
seized. And they remain, with no possessions 
in the world but the four walls of their cottage 
and the tiles of their roof. 

How are they to live henceforth? They 
have never learnt to seek a livelihood elsewhere 
or otherhow than in their homes and on their 
farms. The towns are far away, and even the 
roads to them are often strange. While finally, 
did they but know it, little help can come to 
them out of the towns, themselves looted and 
even sacked, and their shops and houses 
deserted and shuttered. 

At least for the towns there is hope. In 
them remains such authority as still survives. 

62 


THE VILLAGES OF FLANDERS 


Some organization is slowly emerging. Neigh- 
bouring communes help each other. Such 
provisions as are sent in from abroad come to 
the towns. Whenever there is concerted effort 
there is some chance of being heard and helped. 
Even in the little towns men will receive some 
succour, will hearten each other. Perhaps a 
stump of railway line still connects them with 
the world. At least, carts pass through their 
streets. Some energetic citizen contrives to 
form a tiny store of precious food, and its 
existence sends a gleam of hope through even 
the darkest gloom. At least everything 1s not 
dead and desolate. 

But the villages. They have no initiative. 
To them no help comes. Their cry is solitary, 
and dies away unechoed. The cottages are 
scattered about the country, barely in com- 
munication with one another. They are to me 
like little islands of starvation and distress 
looming faintly through the mist. 

Should not those of us, who have a real 
pity for the unprecedented disasters which 
have overtaken Belgium, bear in mind es- 
pecially the despair of the peasant? His silence 
covers the greatest misery of all; for, despite 


63 


BELGIUM S AGONY 


his desolation, he does not complain. And yet 
he has given his three or four sons to his 
country, and they are far away from him, in 
the midst of the horrors, but where, and 
whether dead or alive, he does not know. 

This Christmas night I can see him, sitting 
as usual before the hearth, but this year a 
hearth that is cold and black. Because his arms 
are forbidden to toil, it is his thought which 
blunders to and fro, seeking hope in his 
disaster. This toil-worn, silent man, who was 
a hero at the moment when his country needed 
heroism, is faced now with an inevitable death, 
here in his house, here in the house in which 
his father lived before him. He is utterly 
lonely, utterly helpless. Lost in the distant 
plains, he feels himself lost in the utter distance 
of the world. 

O—is human pity so narrow, so hampered, 
that it cannot reach its hand over there into 
Flanders or La Wallonie, and bring some 
succour to that silent, uncomplaining man, 
who, to-morrow, perhaps, may be no more? 


CHAPTER VI 
PERVYSE 
LEFT England by the Folkestone cross- 


channel steamer to Boulogne, where a 
motor-car was awaiting me. We started at 
once. Our speed rapidly became very great, 
and we flew past ammunition waggons and 
hospital carriages without any checking of our 
course. Whenever we met other motor-cars, 
we heard the same sharp, violent clatter that is 
caused by two trains that cross each other at 
high speed. Already we had lost thought of 
our own safety. 

For the moment there is no administrative 
frontier between France and Belgium. The 
Customs officers have turned soldiers. The 
Douane is no more. Only the sign-post re- 
mains. But all the same the way is constantly 
barred and controlled. Two waggons drawn 
up, one on each side of the road, and piled 
about with objects of every kind, leave only a 
65 F 


BELGIUM S AGONY 


very narrow passage free between them. This 
passage is guarded by soldiery. We are chal- 
lenged, and shout the password into the wind. 
The car is off again on its headlong career. 

Adinkerke first and then Furnes. The little 
town is full of troops. They are lodged in 
the churches of S. Nicholas and S. Walburga. 
Along the walls are beds of straw. Above 
each bed, built into the walls themselves, rise 
tombstones, great slabs on which one can just 
decipher, blurred by time, the names of men 
and women long dead. Alike their many 
virtues, their titles, and even their dates, are 
fading into illegibility and oblivion. 

But little thought of the gruesome chance 
that has set their beds upon graves troubles 
the soldiers who now sprawl on the straw in 
the golden sunlight. They eat and are merry. 
The statue of S. Nicholas stands below the 
throne ; a cartridge belt is slung over his 
pastoral staff. 

The little town of Furnes throbs with move- 
ment. All day long motor-cars flash through 
her streets. Her former silence has utterly 
vanished. In the main square little perambu- 
lating stall-shops dispense a poor but precious 


66 


PER WYSE 


tobacco. Each morsel is weighed with the 
utmost care. It is raining now, and the rain 
makes the tobacco heavy with damp. The 
good man therefore gives to every soldier client 
a pinch of overweight. 

“‘ The bad weather, you see,” he says, “and 
also I am a good patriot, and I love soldiers.” 

And now the road to Pervyse stretches in 
front of us, bordered with trees either lopped 
off short, or twisted as in agony. Huge pits 
yawn in the meadows on either side. Perhaps 
there are twenty shells at the bottom, all of 
which have failed to explode. A gunner tells 
me that when a shell falls, the cattle lumber 
away in terror. But ina few moments, urged 
by their insatiable curiosity, they draw timidly 
near once more, and peer into the hole the 
shells have made. The ground is soft, and 
from time to time a cow falls in on the top of 
the shells. It struggles madly to get out of 
the pit, and the soldiers near by are always 
afraid that, trampling on the pile of powder and 
bullets, its hoofs will awake the slumbering 
anger of the unexploded shells. 

Here and there, in mid-field or near a 
tree, is a rough cross. A kepi, a handful of 

67 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


faded flowers, mark these graves of noble men. 
Further on there are dead horses lying. 

It is on entering Pervyse that we get the 
first sight of real horror. The main street is 
like a great museum of prehistoric fauna. The 
house-roofs, denuded of tiles and the joists 
left naked, have tilted forward on to the side 
walks, so that they hang in mid air like giant 
vertebrae. Behind them the ruins of walls 
and gables suggest huge skeletons shattered 
and broken. 

Through the windows one can see the poor 
furniture of poor households. The beds have 
been ripped open, the stoves upset, so that 
they lie with their feet in the air. Perhaps 
the Christ from the chimney corner has been 
hurled to the ground, while St. John and 
the Virgin have remained unscathed by the 
falling shells. I sawone little First Communion 
wreath torn to pieces by bullets, so that its 
white rose petals lay scattered among the soot 
and the fallen plaster. 

One house only of the whole village of 
Pervyse has been spared. Its owner has seen 
no reason for going away. He is a man of 
middle age. As he watches us pass without 

68 


PER VYSE 


saying a word, he holds in his hands an 
enormous broom. For it was Saturday, and 
this man, amidst the total ruin of his village, 
was punctually cleaning his window and the 
pavement before his door, because the follow- 
ing day was Sunday. Could there be a better 
example of the proverbial Flemish cleanliness, 
even in times of war and universal disaster? 

We take our way towards Nieuport, passing 
by Coxyde. In this country of dunes, where 
the sand swept before the wind tingles in our 
faces, the Arabs and the Senegalese have 
pitched their encampment. Were it not for 
the bitter cold they might think themselves 
in their own desert. On the summit of one 
little hill a mounted sentinel stands out in 
profile. Amazing the impression of this tro- 
pical silhouette against the stormy and cloud- 
laden northern sky. Indeed, a piece of Africa 
welded on to a piece of Flanders. 

On all sides the cannon is thundering. Five 
yards away is a French battery. Methodically 
the charge is slipped into the gun, and time 
after time those near are deafened with the 
noise of the shot that follows. Urged by pride 
and admiration, the spectator draws nearer to 


69 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


look. The desire seizes him to expose him- 
self suddenly, without reason, high up on a 
mound near by, in full view of the enemy. 
The desire for danger becomes a passion as 
strong as that of love. One is intoxicated with 
the smell of powder and the sense of peril. 
One is ashamed not to be able, like the others, 
forthwith to risk one’s life. I believe that 
heroism is learnt in a flash or never learnt at 
all. 

We now approach the trenches themselves. 
They lie across a road near a station, barring 
the way. Bending ourselves double, we crawl 
into the kind of dungeons in which our soldiers 
sleep, eat and smoke away the time. Under 
a sort of pent-house is the gun. A lighted 
match flickers on the gleaming copper. The 
soldiers are in excellent spirits; as we shake 
hands with them they laugh. Their clumsy 
jokes fall on the Germans like clods of earth. 
For two days now this trench has been left in 
peace. The enemy is bombarding alternately 
Dixmude and Nieuport. It seems that whim 
alone decides the direction of his fire. Since 
his disaster at the Yser, there is no sign of 
ordered plan in his efforts. He makes a noise, 


7O 


PERV Yor 


seemingly with no object beyond maintaining 
terror. 

We take our way back by Ramscapelle. 
Everywhere the same scenes of desolation that 
we saw at Pervyse. The streets are littered 
with debris of glass and tiles. Mattresses, 
blankets, even table-cloths, curtains, and sheets, 
are stuffed into the window sashes. 

Suddenly, from a cellar, we hear the cry of 
acat. We grope our way down towards the 
sound, but the animal, lean and wretched, flees 
at our approach. 

The shells have played strange havoc at 
Ramscapelle. Shots have forced their way into 
the houses, and out again, where one would 
least expect. Their fantastic course can be fol- 
lowed. One door is so riddled with bullets, that 
it seems a veritable colander. As at Pervyse, 
the church roof has collapsed, and the tower is 
a great skeleton of stone, through which, in 
the falling evening, I can see the stars. 

All this was the terrible side of the battle 
front in Flanders, but my soul was indeed 
exalted by the calm courage of the soldiers, 
and the endurance of the population. 

One mourns, of course, to see ruins piled 


ad 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


one on another with such hate and fury; but 
the sorrow is soon passed. Even the humblest 
peasants seem to treasure in their hearts a 
sombre reserve of energy. They go about 
their work methodically, as though the war was 
only an evil dream, and that the real import- 
ance lay in the waking. 

From the ashes of these towns and villages 
a new and splendid life will arise. The library 
of Louvain will be rebuilt, the church of St. 
Pierre, the Market Hall of Ypres, the towers 
of Dixmude and Nieuport, and each stone will 
be set in its place with mortar as hard and as 
solid as is the hatred which now we feel for 
Germany. 

Those who have died at Ypres, at Dixmude, 
and at Nieuport, will be for ever glorious in 
our history. Their tombs will be sacred. The 
smallest village of the Flemish coast will have 
in its little cemetery a kind of underground 
school, from which children may learn the 
traditions of a race as unchanging as water, 
and as tenacious as fire. 


72 


CHAPTER VII 
DIXMUDE, NIEUPORT, YPRES 


NLY from afar could I see them, these 
little towns of my beloved Flanders, 
Dixmude, Nieuport, Ypres, as in the wind 
and rain of last autumn I made my way toward 
the allied front. From England, through 
Boulogne, Calais, Gravelines, Dunkirk, I tra- 
velled to reach that tiny corner of land which 
was all that remained of my native country. 
With an emotion compounded of joy, grief, 
determination, and pride, was my heart stirred 
as I saw that little strip of Flemish coast. I 
wept and laughed in one moment; never 
before had I felt so keenly the nearness of my 
race. J longed, if only for a moment, to evoke 
within myself the spirit of all my ancestors, 
so that I might love Flanders with a hundred 
hearts instead of one. This desire to increase 
my personality became positively a suffering, 
until during a few moments of silence I felt 
myself exalted, comforted, almost sublime. 


73 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


When first I saw the shells they were falling 
on Nieuport Bains. As they struck the ground, 
a dense column of black smoke bellied upwards 
and outwards. At night they flashed about 
the sky like lightning. It was at once horrible 
and beautiful. 

Nieuport Bains is merely a row of modern 
houses, pretty enough in their way, built 
along a breakwater of stone and brick. Nieu- 
port town, however, is a place of silence and 
loveliness; a place of little houses, their 
windows shyly curtained; where now and 
again, as a step passes along the street, a hand 
pushes the curtains aside, discreetly curious. 
The pavements are uneven, their stones framed 
in grass or moss. The old church in the 
charming little square is surrounded with great 
trees which throw their solid circular shadows 
on the ground. Finally, right on the edge of 
the town, the huge Templar’s tower rears its 
enormous head above the countryside. It is 
like a great monolith, or even some fragment 
of an Egyptian temple. I know of no stranger 
or more unexpected sight than this square 
colossus which towers over the roads and 
fields of Flanders, like a monument of all the 


74 


DIXMUDE, NIEUPORT, YPRES 


grandeur and nobility of the heroic past. It 
stands for strength and endurance, as though 
by its example it would raise the present to 
the level of the times gone by. Firm in the 
accomplishment of this tremendous mission, 
it defies all attacks. In vain have the German 
guns thundered against it. They have failed 
to throw it down because the ideal for which 
it stands shall outlast, in its nobility, the 
machine-made terror of their rage. 

The jewel of Dixmude, besides the great 
square dominated by an old and splendid 
church, is the Béguinage, a tiny cloistered 
thing where one lives as at the end of the 
earth. Indescribable is the air of isolation in 
this place. The old alms-women, not more 
than three or four in the morning, perhaps 
five or six in the afternoon, move slowly across 
the paths of the central enclosure, each one at 
her appointed and unvarying hour. Their 
white caps accentuate the gentleness of their 
faces like a peaceful halo. Behind the little 
windows other tired and aged women busy 
themselves with the work of their tiny house- 
holds. In the summer they take the air, sitting 
at their doorways. In winter they sit, seemingly 


75 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


without moving, in their chairs before their 
little fires, their only companion an ancient 
book of prayers. They have their treasure and 
their happiness in the regular monotony of 
their lives. A stretch of white wall, a crucifix 
above the mirror, a statuette of some saint 
upon the mantelshelf,a few straw-seated chairs, 
each with its rush mat in front of it, these 
make up the modest idea of cleanliness and 
comfort proper to the place. Surely, if the 
Blessed Virgin came back to earth, it is in 
some such place as this that She would choose 
to dwell, some such community as this of 
quiet and holy thoughts, in which to pass Her 
life now that Her Son is dead... . 

Ypres has a past quite different from that 
of Nieuport or Dixmude, a past of war and 
magnificence. Her main square, next to that 
of Brussels, is the most beautiful in the world. 
Her Town Hall, her Cathedral, her Market 
Hall, combine all the splendours. The Town 
Hall and Cathedral are assuredly beautiful, 
but the Market Hall is more than that, for it 
is unique. Its severity, its length, thesymmetry 
of its lines, its roofs like great wings feathered 
with slates, its soaring and massive walls, 

76 


DIXMUDE, NIEUPORT, YPRES 


suggest a giant triumphal arch. It is so large 
that in times of peril the whole town could 
gather there for shelter. Inside, an artist (but 
for his modesty his name should now be one 
of glory), has spent a lifetime over twenty 
frescoes, each one alive with the spirit of the 
town’s history. His name is Delbeck. In no 
dictionary of the celebrities of his time is there 
mention either of his birth or his death. He 
lived his humble life, passing year after year 
inside a famous building, with no ambition 
except to avoid dishonouring by his art the 
great walls that had been entrusted to his care. 
And he achieved his wish, for, so far from 
dishonouring the walls, he has made them 
more precious and moretragic by his graciously 
coloured pictures of famous citizens, of noble 
counts, of grave and learned judges. 

The Market Hall of Ypres has always been 
a communal building. In the middle ages it 
was the business centre of the cloth makers, 
the weavers, the fullers. It has seen popular 
revolts and rioting. It has known agony and 
passion, joy and pride. For centuries it has 
stood there, the wonder of Ypres. 

Unlike Bruges, Ypres has never decked 


DS 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


herself out as a museum. Bruges, in the same 
way as Nuremberg, is a trap for tourists. She 
erects modern reproductions of old buildings, 
so that the unwary visitor may take them for 
real antiquities. At Ypres there is no deceit. 
The town makes no archaeological toilette to 
tempt the innocent stranger. The present 
grows out of the past, and the marks of the 
graftingare left unconcealed. In that is honesty 
and loyalty. 

Such were, before the war, these three beau- 
tiful little towns of Flanders by the sea. They 
were a calm and glorious trinity. To say the 
name of one of them immediately brought to 
the mind those of the other two. The sea 
loved them. She swept towards them with 
a murmur of waves; the tremendous booming 
song of her equinoctial winds was their lullaby. 
Their towers gazed out over the sandhills to 
where the great ships were passing by in the 
open sea. They dominated a fertileland rescued 
long ago by our Flemish ancestors from the 
very waves themselves. Fine roads, bordered 
with willows, lead from Ypres to Dixmude, 
from Dixmude to Nieuport. The three towns 
asked only to live at peace in the sunshine. 


78 


DIXMUDE, NIEUPORT, YPRES 


But they have been chosen to endure the noise 
and the terror of great guns. 

To-day they are heaps of ruins. Photo- 
graphs taken during the many bombardments 
show the Market Hall of Ypres in flames. 
Between the slates a curl of smoke, then 
the ragged tongues of flame, and the whole 
building is a blaze. The belfry still stands, 
a kind of Hercules presiding at the funeral 
pyre. But before long it also will totter and 
remain only a huge stone skeleton, never 
more to hold the great clock, which was its 
soul. 

At Dixmude, in the principal church, a 
masterpiece of Jordaens stood over the altar. 
It showed the Adoration of the Magi. In the 
background of the picture, humbly bowed, ap- 
peared the good St. Joseph. Flemish peasants, 
mockingly irreverent, taunt his humility, while 
in the foreground is displayed all the splendour 
of the Orient. Strikingly typical of the Flemish 
spirit, at once mystic and sensual, is the blend 
of buffoonery and reverence in one picture. 
Who knows whether the painting still exists? 
It has succumbed, perhaps, to the German 
shells, Or is it now on its way to Berlin, where 


1? 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


a place is prepared for it on the walls of the 
Kaiser Friedrich Museum? 

Ypres, Nieuport, and Dixmude should be 
able to claim a right to special consideration 
among the towns of Belgium, when the time 
of reconstruction arrives. They have been 
grievously proved; their torture has been the 
cruellest. They were undefended; it seems 
incredible that they should have been sought 
out by fate, in their distant corner of Flanders, 
to meet a fiery martyrdom. 

Far more than Ghent or Bruges or Antwerp, 
they had remained purely Flemish. Each had 
its dialect, clear and sonorous, expressive of 
the Flemish soul in a way that the toneless 
and official culture of a great town’s dialect 
can never be. War has dragged them brutally 
from the silence that they loved. They ask no 
better than to go back thither, into a silence 
that is not the dead abandonment of a German 
domination, but the gentle silence of the real 
Flanders that has lain upon them through the 
ages. 


80 


GUILLAUME II 





GUILLAUME ITI 


ES soirs de féte, en des banquets, 
Il 8’ évoquait 
A la lueur de candélabres ; 
Son buste chargé d’or dans Vor étincelait 
Et son verbe emphatique et farouche jonglait 
Ou bien avec son casque ou bien avec son sabre. 


Il sévissait, pareil a Paquilon, 
De l'un a Vautre bout de son empire énorme; 
Il paradait de large en long, 
Coiffé, sanglé, botté du front jusqu’aux talons. 
Pourtant, bien qwil le décorat des cent galons 
De ses cent uniformes, 
Son bras gauche restait obstinément difforme. 


Il était P Empereur estropieé, 
Dont les gestes font pitié 
Dés quwil parle des ailes grandes 
De laigle allemande; 
Il était 1 Empereur, mais demeurait celui 
Qu’ assiegent les grands réves 


83 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


Et qui ne parvient pas a soulever le glaive 
A deux mains, devant lui. 


Son mysticisme dur, violent et rapace 
Prenait la foudre a Dieu pour en frapper 
Pespace; 
L’hypocrisie armait son esprit puritain; 
Il ordonnait et déploratt la tragédie 
Du massacre éclairé par le rouge incendie; 
Pendant qu'il brilait Reims, il pleurait sur 
Louvain; 
Son orgueil, comme un bloc, se carrait sur la terre 
Et le seul froncement de son sourctl hautain 
Lui paraissait devoir angotsser le mystere 
Et mater le destin. 


De la Flandre jusqu’en Crimée 
Retentissait le pas scandé de ses armées ; 
Il leur apparaissait debout dans son manteau, 
Leur imposant de triompher coute que coute; 
Mais des qu'il prétendait et les guider 

Et seul les commander, 

Aussitot la déroute 

Poussait au long des routes 
La fuite oblique et la frayeur de ses drapeaux. 


84 


GUILLAUME II 


Ses régiments 2—1/ les dressait a coups de botte; 
La schlague?—il la disait dprement patriote; 
Un morne automatisme animait seul lessor 
Des bataillons compaés qwil jetait vers la mort. 
Dites, pour broyer a la fois France et Belgique, 
Dites, depuis quels temps 
Préparait-il ses peuples allemands 
A sa guerre pédagogique? 


Hier & férusalem, et demain a Tanger, 

Et plus tard & Bagdad, et puis un jour en Chine, 
Le monde était pour lui comme un tremplin léger 
Ou Sexergaient son pied, sa jambe et son échine. 


Au Nord, les soirs d été, il se croyait pareil 

Aux paladins casqués des légendes insignes. 

Parfois, il s affublait en Lohengrin vermeil 

Et son yacht, sur la mer, voguait, blanc comme 
un cygne. 


Il s employait partout, fantasque et affairé 
Et ne se doutait pas, en son ame étourdie, 
Que de tout ce qui est simple, noble et sacré 
Il était la coupable et morne parodie. 


Son fils, sec et fluet, était plus fol encor: 
Bien qu il mélat Dieu sait quels vices de caserne 


85 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


Avec un got étrange et sombre pour la mort, 
On le disait stri& et moderne. 
Sa lourde joie était de n’étre pas manchot 
Et de pouvoir, méme a deux poings, mater le trot 
De ses caracolants chevaux 
Quand il se pavanait aux cétés de son pére ; 
Certains déja le préféraient secrétement 
Et Pavouaient dans le mystére. 
Pourtant, 
Bien quwils fussent l'un de l’autre le chdtiment, 
Fils et pere se renvoyaient, publiquement, 
La gloire 
Et d@étre l'un pour [autre un soleil dans T his- 
toire, 
Et de se compléter par leur rayonnement. 


Mais leur peine a tous deux était certe infinie, 
Quand ils fouillaient en vain leur cerveau et 
leur ceur 
Dans Vespoir d’y trouver au moins quelque lueur 
De génie; 
Ils ne se disaient rien, car tous deux comprena- 
ent; 
L’Empereur, tout a coup, rageait et fulminait, 
Et dans un geste large il jetait son délire 
Comme mesure a son empire; 


86 


GUILEAUME Trt 


Il se voulait grand quand méme, dés aujourd'hui; 
Son peuple et ses soldats s affoleraient en lut; 
Ils formeraient ensemble une force effrénée, 
S’imposant par le crime a la terre étonneée; 
La cruauté, lV effroi, la rage et la fureur 
Peuvent, elles aussi, atteindre a la grandeur; 
On ne sait quoi de formidable et d’apre éclate 
Dans les destins de la science scélérate 
Que l’ Allemagne emploie a prodiguer la mort; 
Nouveaux sont pour l’ Europe et la vie et le sort. 
Plus n'est besoin d’honneur, de vertu ni de gloire 
Puisque le calcul dur et la trahison noire 
Abattent mieux encor 
Sur Punivers dompteé, les poings de la vittoire. 


Dailleurs nest-il point, lui,l’ Empereur et le Roi 
Qui serre entre ses mains et modele le droit 
Qu’ accepteront, demain, vingt peuples militaires 
N’a-t-il point ses canons, dont les feux solitaires 
Brisent un fort et ses coupoles d’un seul coup? 
Commengant par Paris, finissant par Moscou, 
Avec sa garde blanche il fera ses entrées 
Sous les portes aux cent fleurons 

Des capitales atterrées. 
Et ses fifres et ses tambours et ses clairons 

Annonceront 


87 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


Que monte et gue Sépand sous le ciel d’ Alle- 
magne, 

Pour la terreur du monde, un plus grand Charle- 
magne. 


Heélas! depuis le temps que ce réve sen vint 
Battre son front sonore et vain, 
A-t-il senti avec quel rire 
L’accueillirent 
Ceux qui vraiment créaient et fondaient les 
empires 2 


88 


Cia PTER Vili 
GERMANY UNCIVILIZABLE 


IFE is not a means, but an end. With- 
out this conviction a man can have no 
real existence in this world, for from it springs 
his chief duty, to make life a perfect thing, a 
masterpiece; to despise and hate those seek 
to soil it by their acts or by their thoughts. 
In this ideal Germany has no part. She 
has her culture, but she has no civilization. 
The pride and freedom of the true social 
spirit is founded on intelligence but not on 
knowledge. The German professor is a 
walking library, an accumulation of facts, 
catalogued and annotated. Order and discip- 
line are for him the sum of virtue. Under 
their pressure he becomes slowly servile and 
dependent. The habit of classifying know- 
ledge tends to make him ready to submit 
himself to social classification. The world to 
him is a ladder; one either climbs a rung 


89 


BELGIUM'S: 2G ONY 


higher or descends a rung lower. Thoughts 
fall into sealed compartments. His German 
mind becomes gradually materialized, con- 
gealed, and he remains a single rigid square 
in an unchanging social draught-board. 

It is no new saying that the German never 
invents, but merely works upon the dis- 
coveries of others. And the reason for this is 
that in order to originate a man must have the 
capacity for rebellion. This the German cannot 
have, because he is the type that submits. 

No sooner has a new discovery been made 
than he seizes upon it, examines it, tests it 
from every side, and succeeds usually in 
increasing its power and its importance. 
Finally, he finds for it a practical application 
and labels it accordingly, even as he himself 
is classified and labelled for his task in life. 

In science the Germans have never faced a 
great new opening. Their paths are always 
lateral. From the highway of Descartes 
spring the side-roads of Leibnitz and Kant; 
there could hardly have been a Haeckel with- 
out a Darwin; Koch and Bering found their 
labours upon the work of Pasteur. 

To the development of this second-hand 


go 


GERMANY UNCIVILIZABLE 


scientific research flock crowds of second-rate 
scholars. Each one, working in his little 
corner on his particular little subject, feels 
himself someone and swells with pompous 
vanity. Every little provincial university be- 
comes a nest of learning, happy in the sun- 
shine of the German conception of scholarship 
and seriousness. But it is really barrack life 
in a laboratory, and lacks utterly initiative, 
spontaneity, and above all, revolt. 

If the German people had any real civili- 
zation they could not have kept silence in 
the face of Belgium’s martyrdom. But even 
among those whose expressed ideas were 
hostile to every existing form of government, 
not a single one protested against this deed, 
admitted by the German Chancellor in full 
Reichstag to be a crime. The world has not 
yet recovered from its amazement at this 
silence. Liebknecht alone excepted, the 
German Social Democrats are dishonoured 
men. There was a cry to expel them from 
the “International.” They made excuses, 
deepening their shame: 

“Our members would have been im- 
prisoned.” 


gi 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


And the answer was: 

“Were they then afraid to suffer for their 
faith ?”” 

The Social Democratic party in Germany 
was organized and brigaded like the uni- 
versities and the army. Its voting power 
was enormous. It seemed invincible, tri- 
umphant. In other countries men said: 

“That is the real Germany.” 

May it serve as a bitter warning to all 
democracies! Its admirers declared that at 
the moment of need, this Socialist party 
would swallow the Imperialists at a gulp. 
In August last year, in one hour in the 
Reichstag, it was itself swallowed. 

Quite recently some German socialists 
visited the Maison du Peuple at Brussels. 
They expressed astonishment that the Belgian 
democrats set such store by the invasion of 
their country. 

“What is it binds you so closely to your 
native land?” 

“Honour,” replied the Belgians. 

“Honour!” scoffed the Germans. “How 
absurdly middle-class!” 


But honour is, all the same, the essence of 


92 


GERMANY UNCIVILIZABLE 


civilization. As an ideal it is aristocratic, 
having come down to us from the great men 
of past ages. With a more perfected training, 
force comes to oppose itself. It becomes con- 
trolled, intelligent, tempered with reserve and 
tact. Brute force becomes moral force; power 
becomes justice. 

The further a nation is advanced in this 
development, the further she is from the 
material, the nearer to the spiritual, the 
greater the respect she shows in her institu- 
tions to the mass of humanity as a whole, 
the more she is civilized and the more she 
is noble. 

Such a nation keeps her word. Interest, 
even necessity cannot force her to betrayal. 
She seeks to protect and not to crush those 
weaker than herself. She strives to spread 
through the world social ideals of a certain 
kind, which, however they may be Utopian, are 
good to cherish in the heart, so that life may 
be not merely for the present but also for 
the future. 

These social ideals are the expression of 
fundamental human generosity. They will 
never be put wholly in practice, but towards 


93 


BEL GLU Mis VG oNsy 


their achievement efforts will always be made. 
They are the negation of brute force; they 
guide the world towards a common peace; 
they have faith in the infinite perfeétibility 
of human conscience. But only a nation 
whose civilization is noble can conceive such 
visions, can realize such harmony as possible 
among men. Germany has never attained to 
this conception, because her people are un- 
adaptable and impossible to educate. 

During my life I have been present at 
numerous gatherings in many European capi- 
tals, where Englishmen, Frenchmen, Italians, 
Russians, and Germans, jostled and argued 
in varied languages. Often the assembled 
company had great reputations, one and all. 
But I never saw, at any one of them, a 
German really appear to advantage. They 
are always half awkward, half aggressive, 
with a politeness little more than skin-deep. 
They seem afraid of appearing old-fashioned in 
idea. They applaud the most eccentric taste; 
they interpret “modernity” to mean the ex- 
treme of up-to-dateness; it would positively 
pain them if anyone in their presence praised 
anything the least bit bygone. As soon as a 


a4: 


GERMANY UNCIVILIZABLE 


German can get a hearing and begin to talk, 
he holds forth. But his harangue makes a 
point neither of clearness of phrase nor 
subtlety of meaning. 

And it is the same in public as in private 
affairs. How cumbrous is the movement of 
the German diplomat about the foreign office 
tables of Europe. With what clumsy violence 
does the German conqueror impose himself 
on the lands he wins. 

France, in fifty years, has made herself 
beloved in Savoy; in two centuries she as- 
similated Lille, Dunkirk, Strasburg, and 
Alsace. England in a few decades has at- 
tached to herself Egypt and South Africa. 
But Germany is still a hated name alike 
in Poland, Schleswig and Alsace-Lorraine. 
Wherever she goes, she is unwanted. She 
knows only the way to tear apart; not the 
way to unite and heal. Her proclamations 
shrivel the human mind as frost shrivels 
plants. She can neither attract, nor tempt, 
nor civilize, because she has herself no deep 
spiritual force. Europe, under the successive 
hegemony of Athens, Rome, and Paris, has 
been the noblest home of human progress 


95 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


and development. Under German domina- 
tion she will drift dismally into a gloomy 
officialdom, organized and drilled by a tyran- 
nous ruling caste. 

Nowadays we are forced to believe, how- 
ever sadly, that the true Germany is, only by 
accident, that of Goethe, Beethoven, and 
Heine. Generally, almost always, she is a 
country of cruel barons and brutal soldiery. 
Thousands of years ago she let loose her 
hordes upon Europe, and she is doing the 
same to-day; it is her awful and _ sinister 
function. Let us make no mistake for the 
future. She is dangerous because she cannot 
be civilized, and in her castles, her valleys, 
and her barracks is a store, unexhausted and 
perhaps inexhaustible, of human savagery. 


96 


CHAPTER IX 
GERMANY AND ART 


ATIONS cannot live if one among 
them sees existence as a stage on which 
she can act with arrogance and violence for 
herself alone. Germany seeks to absorb the 
lives of all peoples in her own. She claims to 
be the sovereign nation responsible only to 
herself for her excesses. It is for her to think, 
feel, and will in the name of all the world. It 
is for her to lay down what is permissible and 
what is not. She assumes the role on earth, 
not of destiny, but of God. 

It is easy for her to persuade herself that a 
moral conquest comes with a material one, 
that to dominate is also to charm. MHer 
discipline—that is to say her tyranny—she 
considers indispensable to future progress. 
She does not pause to ask whether the gradu- 
ated and wide-spread vassaldom which her 
discipline and her tyranny implies, is not the 


97 H 


BELGIUMS AGOA® 


greatest obstacle to the acceptance of her rule. 
Nevertheless, her methods, which she believes 
essential, are doomed to become merely futile, 
her strength, which she believes infallible, to 
become as infallible a weakness. 

To impose her supremacy, therefore, Ger- 
many must control, so far as she may, the 
individual life of other nations. She must 
check the development of their differences and 
their contrasts, she must wage war on the 
originality of each group of human beings, on 
their various ideas of progress, order, and 
happiness. She must consequently, whether 
she wishes it or no, combat their special 
conceptions of beauty. Art, in its turn, must 
become booty and prey to her. She must crush 
and destroy all art that is not her own. Her 
mad conceit will convince her of the justice 
and necessity of the deed. She must go further 
and attack the past. No witness, whether of 
stone or bronze, will be heard that denies her 
aesthetic supremacy. Already Reims and her 
cathedral, things lovely as the day and night 
themselves, are razed to the ground. Already 
Ypres and her Market Hall, which sprang 
like a wonderful arch from the earth, are a 


98 


GERMANY AND ART 


heap of cinders. Already the church of St. 
Pierre and the Library of Louvain, the alms- 
houses of Termonde, are dead. To reproaches 
Germany replies: “I will replace these ancient 
monuments with finer modern substitutes. 
My taste shall provide them.” 

Always the pedagogue, she is infallible in 
all things, and beauty also is to be shaped by 
her hands alone. All the nobility of the genius 
of a race or of an individual, shall only survive 
with the modifications and at the command 
of the Teutonic despot. Irony and wit shall be 
curbed; originality and spontaneity abolished. 
The rhythm of the goose-step shall dominate 
all other rhythms; it shall be heard even in 
poetry. Free and personal art has had its day ; 
the art of the future shall be hard, sharp, and 
glittering as a sword. 

Of such an art the world has a horror; it 
can barely conceive so monstrousathing. Till 
to-day, beauty, evolving from century to 
century, has found unity in diversity; it has 
blossomed, successively or simultaneously, in 
the countries of its choice. Italy, Flanders, 
and France have been specially favoured; but 
no one of them has ever sought, by brutality, 


99 


BELGTUSMS AGONT 


to impose her temporary superiority on the 
others. The very opposite was the case. 
Influence was reciprocal and always peaceful 
and advantageous. At certain times, in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Italy claimed 
the admiration of the world for Fra Angelico, 
Verrochio, Botticelli, Masaccio, while Flanders 
replied by flashing abroad the brilliance of 
Van Eyck, Van der Goes, Memling, Juste de 
Gand, Gérard David, Van der Weyden. 

Later, to Carracci, Reni, Domenichino, Al- 
bani, the Barrocci, Caravaggio, Bernini, made 
answer Rubens, Van Dyck, Seghers, Cornelius 
de Vos, Crayer, Jordaens, Teniers. Spain, with 
Velasquez, Herrera, Ribera, Zurbaran, and 
Murillo; Holland, with Rembrandt, Vermeer, 
Ruysdael, Hobbema, Fabritius, Steen, Hals, 
and Pieter de Hooch; and France, with 
Poussin, Claude Lorrain, Dughet, Lesueur, 
and Callot, spread over the whole of Europe 
the light of noble art. 

Art was, at the same time and according to 
the country in which it developed, idealist or 
realist, ascetic or sensual, And along the walls 
of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, it 
hung a splendid garland, to which each flower 

100 


GERMANY AND ART 


contributed its particular and harmonious 
beauty. 

Never in modern times have nations striven 
with such ardour after beauty; even the 
ancient world was rivalled, if not surpassed. 

If Germany were Europe’s conqueror, such 
a golden age of art, even were geniuses alive 
as great as these, would be impossible. Ger- 
many would break, systematically and scien- 
tifically, every one of those subtle ties between 
the artist and his proud and noble race, which 
spring from the heart of his mysterious power. 
The creator of masterpieces would shrink 
under the German determination to regulate, 
to brigade, to organize; he would be compelled 
to work after the ideals of Munich and Berlin ; 
apt and mechanical rules, with axioms and 
arguments as commentary, would tell him 
that he can only avoid the production of 
ugliness, by yielding to the orders of tyranny 
and working as he is told to work. 

Slowly, year by year, decade by decade, a 
European art has come into being. Those who 
toiled for it had little consciousness of it. 
They were instin¢tive in their efforts to pluck 
out from their own natures whatever was 

101 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


narrow and exclusive. They humanized their 
feelings and their thoughts, but without losing 
their originality of mind. Everyone of them 
was faithful to his race, although he rose above 
and beyond it; he knew no constraint. Ger- 
many is attacking this European art at its 
vital point. It was rising in freedom; she 
seeks to hold it down and curb it to her will. 
In the effort she is really killing it at one 
blow. 

After the war it will be necessary for national 
art, even nationalist art, to be again stressed 
and developed. Germany conquered, every 
man will be more passionately attached than 
before to the corner of ground he came so 
near to losing altogether. Europe will return 
to the old conception of territorial literature 
and painting. The different schools will appear 
again, each in its respective country. 

Germany will turn into herself again, as 
she did after Jéna. She will collect all the 
strength that remains to her to work, and her 
silence will be blent of disillusion and bitter- 
ness. Art, which has not been lavish to her 
during her time of madness and bombast, will 
perhaps be more generous in her misfortune. 

102 


SekKMANY AND ART 


The resources of a nation may be likened 
to geological strata. One stratum lies deep; 
another less so; a third, a surface stratum, 
lies exposed. Perhaps that stratum of Ger- 
many which yielded Goethe and Schiller, will 
once more be worked, while those which 
produced Bismarck and von Moltke lie neg- 
lected. 

Let us, indeed, pray for a German artistic 
renaissance. First, for the common good and 
beauty of the world; second, so that the 
flowers of this new blossoming may cloak the 
dung-hill of to-day’s crimes. 

Those who talk of exterminating the Ger- 
mans do not realize that a young people cannot 
be exterminated. Only old and decaying 
nations can perish altogether. But the world 
has to defend itself against Germany with 
courage and tenacity. France and England 
must prepare to abandon confidence and live 
in mistrust. They must accept a future, in 
which life will be harsh and at extreme tension, 
like a drawn bow. Germany must be countered 
as soon as she goes too far. We must not 
seek to kill her, as I have already said. She 
must be crippled, like her Emperor. 

103 


CHAPTER) X 
GERMANY THE INQUISITOR 


OTHING in the world is more cynical 
or shameless than the habit of dog- 
matic assertion, which modern Germany has 
acquired. Her people have little aptitude for 
suppleness of speech; their minds are little 
suited to lucid or ingenious reasoning. They 
are compelled, therefore, to resort to brutality 
in their words as in their deeds. Now brutality 
of the mind isnaked and shameless dogmatism. 
The Kaiser says: ‘God is with us. I am 
His spirit and His sword. When we vanquish 
our foes, the honour and glory are His.” 

On what authority? The man merely voices 
his dreams and his visions. Lunatics do the 
same. In truth, God’s honour would have a 
strange bed-fellow in that of William II. 

German geographers proclaim: ‘From the 
Baltic to the North Sea, from Riga to Boulogne, 
Germany, Champagne, Belgium, and part of 

104 


GERMANY THE INQUISITOR 


France, all these lands are peopled by the 
Germanic race; Northern Europe, therefore, 
should be, and shall be, ours.” 

The assertion is simply untrue. These 
peoples are of varied origin. Some are Gauls, 
others, like the Walloons, Latin through and 
through. 

The German sage, in the person of Herr 
Ostwald, professor of chemistry, writes: 
“German civilization is the foremost in the 
world, because it has abandoned the epoch of 
individualism and entered upon that of or- 
ganization. Among our enemies the Russians 
are still in the tribal epoch, while the French 
and the English have arrived at a stage of 
cultural development which we left behind us 
50 years ago.” 

But the organized civilization thus vaunted 
is really retrogressive. In the Middle Ages 
the Catholic Church imposed it far and wide 
on Europe. In economics the guilds established 
it, with its resulting tyranny and stagnation. 
Everything was done by special groups for 
the benefit of special groups. The individual 
ceased to count. Initiative and invention 
became impossible. The machine stifled intel- 

105 


BELGIUM S AGONY 


lect; 1789 was needed to revive in Europe the 
spirit of independent thought and discovery, 
to start industrial and scientific progress on a 
new career of speed and lasting brilliance. 
Civilization is a mixture of freedom and con- 
trol. But excess of freedom is anarchy, and 
excess of control tyranny. German organiza- 
tion is a vast machine which has cowed the 
German people into servitude. Everyone is 
the flunkey of the man above him. No pride, 
no self-respect can survive. The Press is held 
on the leash. Literary and scientific thought 
are drilled and brigaded. The man who resists 
the Emperor is broken. Liebknecht alone ex- 
cepted, the German Socialist Party—itself, 
like the German State, a model of organization 
and discipline—has put the whole of European 
democracy to shame. 

If the organization, lauded by Herr Ostwald, 
is to spread over the world, German dogma 
will scourge and terrorize humanity as did 
formerly the dogma of the Catholic Church. 
There is at bottom only this difference between 
the two doétrines—one is religious and the 
other civil. Both demand absolute submission 
and passive obedience. Both believe themselves 

106 


GERMANY THE INQUISITOR 


unique and destined for supremacy. The 
Roman Church proclaims itself the best of all 
the Churches, as the German State proclaims 
itself the best of all the States. Both have a 
blind belief in their power, and shrink from 
no sacrifice in support of it. Both have their 
apostles and their martyrs. Human life and 
death are for them merely stepping stones to 
world-power. The Roman Church has been 
organized for tyranny throughout history: 
Germany only for fifty years. But she intends 
to make up for lost time. Already, like the 
Church in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, 
she is plunged in mad and savage cruelties. 
She kills, loots, and burns. She stands for the 
terrorism of man as the Church stood for the 
terrorism of God. And as the irony of fate 
decrees that similar forces always struggle 
against one another, German savagery has as- 
saulted Louvain, Malines, Reims, and other 
manifestations of Catholic power. Numbers 
of priests have been killed, and numbers of 
Churches have been razed to the ground 
without hesitation and without pity. 

More than that, William II, at the very 
time he was paying assiduous court to the 

107 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


Pope, told his sister-in-law, who, despite his 
wishes, had become a Catholic, that Catholicism 
it was which must be regarded as the enemy. 
So hateful is it to him that its destruction is 
the aim of his life; but he does not hesitate, 
before he joins battle, to adopt its formidable 
discipline and its headlong folly, its evil and 
unshrinking dogmatism. 

All creeds assert their belief, and do not 
trouble to prove them. Founded on faith, 
they do not go beyond their proper réle to 
appeal to reason. But States are a different 
matter. This, however, does not prevent 
Germany’s determination to be regarded as a 
sort of earthly paradise. She permits no denial 
either of the infallibility of her culture or the 
perfection of her power. That is to say she 
transports, from the realm of the spiritual into 
that of the temporal, a whole system of per- 
suasion and trust. She distorts the conception 
of natural objects; she deceives, or seeks to 
deceive, the whole world. 

A process somewhat similar may succeed 
sometimes among simple and ignorant people. 
The constant asseveration of the same so-called 
truths results in their being accepted. The 

108 


GERMANY THE INQUISITOR 


German nation has been duped by their 
Prussian teachers, whose very words are law, 
who have blunted and atrophied their victims’ 
powers of discernment and discrimination. 
These teachers have directed the eyes of their 
pupils towards a past of military and feudal 
despotism; they have forced on them the 
ideal, not of Heine and Schiller, but of Herr 
Ostwald, professor of chemistry, who thinks 
no doubt that a nation should form an organ- 
ization by a series of actions and reactions, as 
a deposit forms at the bottom of a crucible. 
Spontaneity and deathless progress being thus 
subjected, Germany will reign triumphant 
over a stunned and fettered world of thought. 

If the world permits such a murder of 
liberty, it will be the greatest crime of our 
age. Modern Europe must be able to show 
to history a garland of diverse civilizations to 
which each nation has contributed a flower of 
her genius. The power of Germany, in lessen- 
ing, weakening, or crushing the power of 
France, England, Italy, Russia, Belgium, or 
Spain, is destroying a treasure of ideas, feel- 
ings, and impulses, which by itself it can never 
replace. These ideas, feelings, and impulses 

109 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


are blossoming every day into noble deeds 
and beautiful creation. They are the honour 
and glory of the Western world. In fifty years 
the genius of Germany has been perverted 
into something aggressive and destructive, and 
this something it is which to-day has become 
a menace and a pestilence. 


110 


CHAPTER XI 
GERMANY THE ASIATIC 


N the sixteenth century Spain, with her 

savagery and her fanaticism, seemed like 
a fragment of Africa soldered on to Western 
Europe. The Moors had conquered her. 
They had forced her to accept their brutal 
idea of violent authority. The Moors invaded 
France, but they were driven out again. They 
rooted themselves on the other side of the 
Pyrenees, among the mountain ranges of 
Castile. Cordova and Granada became their 
fortresses and their dominion. 

Under the rule of Isabella the Catholic 
Spain was freed, but her tyrants had left their 
mark, so that her Christianity had the quality 
of her Islamism. She imposed her faith by 
blood and iron, thus following in the footsteps 
of Mahomet. She had her warrior-apostles; 
Alva. She had her dreaded hosts; Antwerp and 
the Flanders knew them well. She organized 

III 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


terror with wholesale murder, with espionage, 
with denunciation, with torture. In the soul 
of each one of her soldiers she sowed the 
lessons of cruelty. 

As Spain in the sixteenth century was im- 
bued with the spirit of Africa, so Germany in 
the twentieth century is imbued with the spirit 
of Asia. 

It is true that, as has been said above, her 
organization, with its myriad and rigid detail, 
is copied from that of mediaeval Catholicism. 
But the spirit which animates this vast machine 
is utterly opposed to Christianity ; it is Semitic. 

Let the facts speak. The Jews have thrust 
themselves, more numerously than anywhere 
else, into German lands. Nearly all the names 
they have adopted are German names. They 
flaunt them about the world. When their 
ghettos were suppressed, they toiled for the 
prosperity of the free cities—Luttbeck, Ham- 
burg, Bremen, Frankfort. Everywhere they 
amassed wealth. Their power became so great 
that it could dispense with proud display. It 
was active and strong, but secret. 

When, after 1870, Germany turned to the 
development of her trade and industry, it was 

112 


GERMANY THE ASIATIC 


the Jews that taught her to organize her efforts 
and to be skilful at business. They were won- 
derful teachers, probably the finest in the 
world. The great German shops, the steam- 
ship companies, the electrical firms are still 
ruled by powerful Jews. In other activities, 
they are less prominent. They prefer to leave 
ostensible direction to native Germans, while, 
from behind the scenes, they exercise the true 
control. And more than that. They surround 
the Emperor, and he chooses from among 
them his intimate advisers. Junkers and 
nobles, tempted by the desire for wealth, 
entrust them with their fortunes, confide to 
them their hopes. In every undertaking of 
German finance, we meet either them, or 
their equally Semitic cousins, the German- 
Americans. 

The Jewish spirit—and this is not said as 
an attack upon it, but rather to show its vic- 
torious influence—has penetrated every de- 
partment of German life, both bourgeois and 
aristocratic. It has blended most completely 
of all in Prussia, for it is in itself an exaggera- 
tion of the Prussian spirit. 

With the exception of the newspapers of 

i) I 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


the Catholic Centre, every great daily of 
Vienna, Frankfort and Berlin is controlled 
by Jews. Jewish ingenuity, intelligence, in- 
dustry, and wealth have made these papers 
prosper. They are up-to-date, well-informed, 
keen-minded and all-embracing. Matters 
artistic are treated as vital and important. 
Art is honoured, perhaps it is genuinely loved. 

To-day the German press is peevish, pre- 
judiced, hypocritical, foolishly boastful. For 
the moment it is subject to its hour and its 
surroundings. Before the war the opinions of 
the day were dominated by it. 

It worked tirelessly, day after day, to trans- 
form the old Germany. It propagated the 
idea of unity, it won over Bavaria, Saxony, 
Wurtemberg. To a people formerly idealist 
it taught efficiency and realism, It turned the 
eyes of the race towards conquest and booty, 
it urged ceaseless vigilance, boundless love of 
gain, skilful daring, endless patience, untiring 
perseverance. Finally, the idea that everything 
has its price, that business dominates the 
world, that all of life is self-interest and none 
of it sentiment, became gradually, not only a 
Jewish but also a German conviction, and so 


114 


GERMANY THE ASIATIC 


far altered the life and character of the new 
German Empire that Karl August would no 
longer have recognized his people. Germany 
became a great industrial and commercial 
power. England and France were out-dis- 
tanced. The supremacy of America was 
threatened. 

This spirit of successful daring that another 
race had taught to German commerce, became, 
in the eyes of German diplomacy and state- 
craft, a desirable possession. They began to 
regard international relations as matters for 
bargaining. A just cause, a nation’s pride or 
conscience, seemed mere phrases, ridiculous 
and obsolete. Governments reasoned in one 
way, ordinary people in another. 

And so, in high politics, one either advanced 
or retreated according as one’s diplomatic 
moves were skilful or clumsy. A demand 
followed a concession; an attack, a retreat. 
Even when Germany presented her ultimatum 
to Belgium, she came prepared for huckstering. 
Never for an instant did she consider that the 
Belgians had spiritual fervour in their souls. 
She talked of profit and loss as on the Stock 
Exchange. When her offers were rejected she 


115 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


was amazed. Her surprise turned to anger, 
and her anger has not yet cooled. 

But it is above all in the conduct of war 
that Germany has revealed the spirit of Asia 
that dominates her. Aryan Europe has, since 
the middle ages, gradually christianized her 
barbarous instinéts. She has fought her battles 
with honour. She has created the most perfec 
type of soldier—the knight. She introduced 
the Truce of God. She condemned deceit and 
treachery. During the Renaissance Francis I 
and Bayard were the models of honour and no- 
bility. In the eighteenth century, at Fontenoy, 
war was courteous and gallant. During the 
French Revolution and the First Empire it 
was sublime. 

To-day, thanks to Germany, war is branded 
and dishonoured by treachery and lies. No 
longer can one rely on the word of the enemy; 
no longer can one trust his promises; his 
every action is known to cloak a crime. 
Candour and honour have disappeared; they 
are mocked and scorned, Crueltyand barbarism 
have become a system. Pity has vanished. 
The wounded are butchered, the dead thrown 
into a river. Dying men are burned alive, 

116 


SPR MANY THE ASIATIC 


prisoners are slain. Prussian methods recall 
those bas-reliefs of the relentless Assurbanipal, 
commanding the torture of his conquered foes, 
their total extermination. Pillage, arson, whole- 
sale destruction were the orders given in war 
by the Babylonians of Asia centuries ago. 
They are the orders given in war by the 
Germans of Europe to-day. The two empires 
are actuated by the same insane pride. It is 
reflected in those ancient documents preserved 
by the Louvre and the British Museum. It 
finds expression in this document of yesterday, 
published in Grossdeutchland und Mitteleuropa 
um das ‘fahr 1950: 

“ After a short term of years, we shall see 
some such sight as this. The German flag 
will wave over 86 millions of Germans, and 
they will govern a dominion peopled by 
130 millions of Europeans. In this great 
empire, only the Germans will have political 
rights, only the Germans will be owners of 
property. They will be a nation of masters, 
permitting, by condescension, that the 
peoples under their rule should perform 
menial labour.” 

It matters little which tyrant of the ancient 


Try 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


Fast puts his signature to this pronouncement 
—Cambyses, Artaxerxes, Sennacherib, Nebu- 
chadnezzar. Through it breathes the most 
savage spirit of inhumanity that has existed 
upon earth. It seeks to plunge the world once 
more into tyranny, to revive slavery, to set 
back history three thousand years. Since the 
Christians of Rome transformed the universe, 
no such mad perversion of power has swayed 
the mind of a conqueror. A nation which 
cherishes such an ideal, arouses once again all 
the savage instin¢ts that were regarded as for 
ever crushed. Such a nation must be battled 
with as one battles with death itself. Europe 
must, as one man, flee from it and avoid it. 
The Turks alone can be its allies; they are 
predestined so to be, seeing that they also have 
inherited the barbarism of Asia. May they 
fight and fall together, and together be hurled 
beyond the pale of civilization. 


118 


CHAPTER XII 
CONCLUSION 


ERMANY, as has been said, has suc- 
ceeded in breathing into the rigid 
organization, which she has modelled on that 
of the Catholic Church, the keen and material 
spirit of the Jews. To unite two powers, 
each one victoriously emerged from the test 
of centuries, was a fine idea but not an easy 
one to carry out. Prussia first undertook 
the task of animating with a Jewish soul the 
Roman body. She had no hesitations; her 
military tradition, at once relentless and 
corrupt, came to her aid. She succeeded. 
This achieved, the work went quickly and 
skilfully forward, from land to land across 
the Germanies. Bavaria and Austria sub- 
mitted with a bad grace. They suffered at 
having to abandon their ancient religious 
traditions of goodness and pity, to crush 
their human kindness, to become states with- 


119 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


out generosity and without faith. Austria, 
especially, could not cut adrift her past nor 
forget that it was against her that the new 
German spirit had won its spurs. Sadowa 
came bitterly to mind. She yielded, however, 
because at the bottom of her heart she knew 
that she also was a bird of prey among 
nations. 

As for Germany herself, when her victory 
over France had given her the preponderance 
of power in Europe, she became the wonder 
of the West. She blustered and bullied and 
none knew better than she, how to win obedi- 
ence. Bismarck was of all men the most adept 
at trampling under his great boots rights and 
protestations. His word was hung upon in 
fear and silence. So far from being over- 
shadowed by the German eagle, he lent to it 
the brilliance of his genius. 

He remade a nation, arming it with vigour 
and courage, imbueing it with his own abrupt- 
ness and terse violence. He turned its mind 
from the ideal to the profitable and the 
modern. He was a great and terrible teacher, 
and, according to his own words: “A German 
fears nothing under the sun, only God.” 

120 


CONCLUSION 


After the fall from power and then the 
death of her pilot and saviour, Germany felt 
herself strong enough to control her own 
destiny. She had schools and barracks. She 
set about acquiring factories and dockyards. 
She had a slight, but respectful, distrust of 
her young Emperor. 

From end to end her territory became a 
hive of industry. The Main, the Oder, the 
Rhine, the Elbe were hedged with factory 
chimneys. Railways and waterways ran side 
by side or crossed each other in every direc- 
tion. Great railway stations were built, their 
huge glass roofs gleaming at night like stars. 
Each ancient city had its new quarter; vast 
shops sprang into being, temples of the new 
German fever; suburbs writhed into the 
country like clutching tentacles; the old 
sun gloomed behind dense clouds of smoke. 
Trashy goods, fatal but beloved of the crowd, 
began to litter the high roads of the new 
German commerce. They were spread the 
world over, catering to the endless different 
desires and tastes of every nation. Orders 
were taken and executed from every corner 
of the earth. Formerly European industry 

121 


BELGIUMS AGONY 


had dominated its clients; distant lands 
must needs use commodities manufactured 
for western tastes. Germany changed all 
this. Her trade was the servant of every 
public and prospered beyond her wildest 
dreams. Soon she was the nation to which 
the markets of Asia, Africa, America, and 
the islands of the seas looked before any 
other. The Stock Exchanges of Sydney, 
of New York, of Singapore, of Bombay 
rang with the clatter of German gold. The 
Frankfort broker became the agent of na- 
tional ambition; the commercial traveller 
from Berlin was the spy or the emissary of 
German world-policy. While she was in 
this way becoming ever stronger and greater 
in every land, Germany began, with tireless 
patience, to win herself a place on the high 
seas. 

In Bismarck’s time there was practically no 
imperial fleet. Over-sea colonization seemed 
to the great statesman mere chimerical rash- 
ness. His policy was European. He worked 
for,a union of the three Empires—German, 
Russian, and Austrian—which should domi- 
nate the Latin races. 

122 


CON CLUSION 


Nevertheless, even during his time, Ham- 
burg was becoming of first importance. 
Bismarck did all in his power to help the 
city. In his retirement he lived not far 
away. He owned a newspaper of the town. 
From this Patmos by the sea, he spoke to 
the world and to the Emperor, never as a 
rebel, but as an opponent whose words had 
sometime won attention. But when, one 
day, a voice said: “Our future lies upon the 
water,” it was not Bismarck’s voice but that 
of William II. 

And all the time the destiny of Germany 
was growing. The greatest shipping-combine 
in the world, led by Ballin, a Jew, covered the 
seas with its ships. Bremen and Litbeck joined 
Hamburg. The Nord-Deutscher Lloyd, in 
rivalry, coalesced with the Hamburg-Amerika. 
England felt herself touched in a tender spot. 
She could not realize all the naked truth 
behind these wonderful German liners that 
passed to and fro over the ocean more swiftly 
and more surely than her own. The will to 
conquer seized the minds of both countries. 
England in this struggle showed the first signs 
of fear. Germany began to increase, with 


123 


BELGIUM'S AGONY 


sudden bounds, her fleets of war. The wealth 
of the Empire was poured out to build ships 
and ever more ships. Germany seemed in 
the grip of a disciplined fury that could not 
stop or even set a limit to the violence of its 
fever. 

In the meantime, in the universities and in 
the army, theorists of a new and dangerous 
type began to appear. They laid down, ina 
kind of revised edition of the Declaration of 
the Rights of Man, the spirit in which this 
vast new acquisition of power and pride should 
be administered. And so, from boyhood on- 
ward, the young German was trained to a 
code of master-morals. The text-books are 
well-known. They have been edited by 
Gobineau, Ostwald, Treitschke, Bernhardi, 
Lasson. In them might dominates right. 
Rigid and relentless organization is upheld 
as the new and unfailing path to perfeétion. 
Germany makes herself out as discoverer of 
this path, as the guide who thereby will lead 
the world to a higher level of civilization. 
She alone has the secret of the way. She 
creates new meanings and values for good and 
evil. Necessity is her only law. To necessity 


124 


CON CEL USTO.N 


must bow treaties, promises, oaths, pride, 
honour, generosity, pity, liberty, progress— 
all the obsolete trash of a vanished era. 
Germanyalone has the key to the new morality, 
because she alone has the force necessary to 
maintain it. It is consequently her duty to 
impose her ideas on the world, and all that she 
does in their name is right. In her relations 
with other peoples she need consider only 
herself. 

During the twenty years spent in building 
this new morality on the foundations of 
German power and industry, the German 
soul has correspondingly changed. Its egot- 
ism is nowa vast deformity. There is, hence- 
forth, in the world nothing but the German. 
He is incapable of seeing outside himself, of 
understanding anything that is not his already. 
The German diplomat is stupid and clumsy, 
the German soldier is automatic and unreflect- 
ing, the German people is blind and obstinate, 
because they cannot, in the least degree, under- 
stand their enemies. They can never put 
themselves in another’s shoes. They weep or 
rejoice, suffer or triumph, for this reason or 
for that, and cannot realize that their neigh- 

125 


BELGIUM’S AGONY 


bours and their enemies may, for the same 
cause, laugh when they weep, suffer when 
they rejoice. Their psychology is that of the 
child. 

This blind egotism leads only to a general 
weakness and collective folly, of which a 
representative, or rather a symbol, is found 
in William II. The Emperor is clothed with 
brilliance, but beneath the splendour he is 
wasted and feeble. He has to the full the 
specious talent required for the work he has 
to do. 

Bismarck held the present, refractory and 
living, in his hands, and curbed it to his will. 
William II contents himself with words. He 
juggles with phrases, gilded like his uniforms, 
and thinks that to prophecy victory in his 
harangues is enough to put it within his 
grasp. His impatience is a danger to his 
country. 

As though to push to its furthest limits 
his own folly and the egotism of his people, 
he has gathered in the deep folds of his 
own vague mysticism all the selfishness, 
all the hate, and all the savagery of those 
around him. Even though his doctors and 

126 


CONCLUSION 


his professors of philosophy still spoke in 
terms of a vague humanity, he himself held 
forth in the name of his own uncontrolled 
sagacity. The God whom Bismarck venerated 
he has given a place at his side. The Deity 
is now his intimate and his colleague. He is 
enjoined to devote Himself to the cause of 
Germany, the chosen land, the genius of the 
world, the sword of destiny. The kings of 
Israel and their prophets talked six thousand 
years ago at Jerusalem as he talks to-day at 
Potsdam and Berlin. And his madness even 
achieves a sort of magnificence. 

The economic enterprise, the science, the 
discipline, the strength of Germany, the arro- 
gance of the German Emperor, have now 
become a national myth, in which the world 
must be taught to believe and whose value it 
must learn to cherish. 

German civilization is a blend of all these 
elements. It has become an instrument of 
despotism. It reaches, like a ladder, from 
material prosperity to transcendent mysticism, 
and among its rungs are commercial, scientific, 
and military organization. But is this civili- 
zation the new discovery it boasts itself to 

127 


BELGLUMS AGON® 


be? Are we non-Germans to regard it as a 
second revelation? 

To begin with, nothing is older than to 
base a scheme of social perfection on a claim 
to Divine Right. William II is a scrupulous 
imitator. He has revived the most ancient 
traditions of Europe. He is emperor and 
king by the Grace of God. When he goes out 
to war, he reminds us either of Mahomet or 
of St. Louis. He talks to his troops as these 
two visionaries must have talked to theirs. 
His lofty mysticism cankers even the principles 
of German domination in Europe and _ the 
world. The history of mediaeval kings, and 
of the tyrants of the Renaissance, shows us 
what we shall undergo if he succeeds in 
planting himself in France, England, or 
Belgium. The organization which this mystic 
tyranny demands is the oldest organization 
in the world, because it is slavery. Professor 
Ostwald and all the pan-Germanists are 
agreed upon that. The old conception of a 
master-people and subject peoples must be 
restored. 

Further, liberty must be diminished and 
most carefully controlled. Submission is in- 

128 


CONCLUSION 


finitely more important than thought. The 
university models itself on the barracks. Work 
in the factories is skilfully graded and divided, 
but at the same time it is brigaded to an absurd 
degree. It suggests the gilds and corporations 
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. 
Everything is foreseen, regulated, congealed, 
stereotyped; everything is ordered to per- 
fection. But what is all that but rusty fetters 
and discredited formulae that the world has 
long ago rejected? 

The methods of organization, whether gov- 
ernmental, economic, or social, which Germany 
has to show us, have been used for centuries 
and are now worn out. All the good that the 
toil and experience of a hundred nations has 
been able to get from them, is enshrined in 
history. We know what has produced on 
earth terror, cruelty, the inquisition, savage 
organization, passive obedience, religious or 
scientific dogmatism, submission of thought 
and longing to the service of some one aim 
that has declared itself sacred, the will for 
power made one with arbitrary tyranny. It is 
the ancient spirit of the feudal world that 
Germany has revived, the same spirit with 

129 K 


BELGIUMS AGONY 


hardly a difference. And just as, for thousands 
of years, humanity has striven to crush it, so 
it must now once and for all be crushed at 
this hour of supreme destiny. 

The spirit of to-day, wrought of pride and 
liberty, wrought of human reason and human 
idealism, wrought of an emotion infectious 
and splendidly dangerous, the spirit of to-day 
which is little more than a hundred years old, 
and the strength and brilliance of which time 
has not yet brought fully to light, is most 
utterly opposed to the spirit of Germany. 
It is the former and not the latter which is 
young, and which turns its face forward to 
the future. It is the former spirit alone that 
contains the seed of the future, and enables 
man to adapt himself to new conditions of 
life, that gives him strength to accomplish 
the inevitable evolution. It is the former 
spirit alone that enshrines the ever-growing 
strength and the ultimate salvation of the 
world. 

And of this spirit, thou, Belgium, art the 
symbol! Thou, even before France and Eng- 
land, defiedst the cruel power of Germany. 
Never has greater honour been thine, honour 

130 


CONCLUSION 


which thou hast won with a heroism, simple 
and magnificent. What matter that at this 
moment thou art bleeding and in agony! 
Never hast thou been more lovely, never 
more beloved. 


FINIS. 





CHISWICK PRESS : CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO 
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON. 






a” fF fort ( i , { - 
Ww 4 “a 






















rh yr 


TIA ie Ob) }! uPA De ee ees 


UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 


Los Angeles 
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below, 


4WK AUG 13 1 


TMK SEP 2 0 1999] 


AU = 


315 


ries 


oe, 
oie 


oe 
, * 





